How to be a judge? Can you be knowledgeable, honest, unprejudiced, fair? The Midrash on this parsha, that begins with appointments and behavior of judges, says a judge should imagine that a sword is hanging above him and that what is below him is Gehinnom (the clearing realm of the afterlife that sometimes is visioned as cleansing fire, here coming from human garbage). If he intends to judge truthfully, then he is saved from both.