As Moses begins his great closing addresses to the next generation, he turns to a subject that dominates the last of the Mosaic books, namely justice:

I charged your judges at that time: ‘Hear the disputes among your people and judge fairly, between one person and another, whether Israelite or migrant. Do not show partiality in judgment: listen equally to the small and the great. Do not be intimidated by any man, for judgment belongs to God. Any case that is too difficult for you, bring to me, and I will hear it.’ (Deut. 1:16-17)

I charged your judges at that time: ‘Hear the disputes among your people and judge fairly, between one person and another, whether Israelite or migrant. Do not show partiality in judgment: listen equally to the small and the great. Do not be intimidated by any man, for judgment belongs to God. Any case that is too difficult for you, bring to me, and I will hear it.’ (Deut. 1:16-17)

Tzedek, “justice”, is a key word in the book of Devarim – most famously in the verse:

Pursue justice, only justice, so that you may live and possess the land that the Lord your God is giving you. (Deut. 16:20)

Pursue justice, only justice, so that you may live and possess the land that the Lord your God is giving you. (Deut. 16:20)

The distribution of the word Tzedek – and its derivate tzedakah – in the Five Books of Moses is anything but random. It is overwhelmingly concentrated on the first and last books, Genesis (where it appears 16 times) and Deuteronomy (18 times). In Exodus it occurs only four times and in Leviticus five. All but one of these are concentrated in two chapters: Exodus 23 (where 3 of the 4 occurrences are in two verses, 23:7-8) and Leviticus 19 (where all 5 incidences are in chapter 19). In Numbers, the word does not appear at all.

This distribution is one of many indications that the Chumash (the Five Books of Moses) is constructed as a chiasmus – a literary unit of the form ABCBA. The structure is this:

A: Genesis – the prehistory of Israel (the distant past) B: Exodus – the journey from Egypt to Mount Sinai C: Leviticus – the code of holiness B: Numbers – the journey from Mount Sinai to the banks of the Jordan A: Deuteronomy – the post-history of Israel (the distant future)

The leitmotiv of tzedek/tzedakah appears at the key points of this structure – the two outer books of Genesis and........

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