והיית אך שמח, “you shall have nothing but joy.” When discussing the festival of Sukkot, the Torah uses the expression שמחה, “joy,” three separate times, twice here and once in Leviticus 23,40. The word שמחה occurs only once in connection with the festival of Sh’vuot, and not at all in connection with the festival of Passover. Seeing that at Passover time no part of the harvest had been collected yet the time had not come to rejoice over the harvest. By the time of Sh’vuot the barley and wheat harvest had been collected, so that there was partial rejoicing. Sukkot signaled the end of the harvesting season, so that at that time the farmer’s heart was full of joy. This is reflected in the Torah using the word “joy” three times in connection with that festival.

שופטים ושוטרים, “Judges and officials to execute the judgments;” shoftim are the judges who do the legal work, shotrim are the officials who see to it that the judgments handed down are executed. (Compare Talmud, tractate Sanhedrin folio 16). In Samuel II 8,15-16 we find a practical illustration of this system when the prophet records: “David ruled over all Israel, and David executed true justice among all his people. Yoav, son of Zeruiah was commander of the army;” the paragraph lists additional civil servants and their respective assignments.” The reason why these details are recorded there is to show that there were separate departments for the legal problems and for executing judgments once they had been formulated.

לא תטע לך אשרה, “do not plant for yourself an asherah; (tree to serve as something to be worshipped.) The wording of the Torah makes it plain that even the mere planting of such a tree is a culpable offense. The Canaanites used to surround the altars for the baal with trees. We know this from Judges 6,28 where Gideon is reported with uprooting those trees and destroying the altar. It appears that when these idolaters sacrificed on their altars the sacrifices were in honour of these trees.