A DISPUTE — a quarrel, a lawsuit, a controversy, and the ordinary Hebrew word for two parties with a case against each other. Deuteronomy 17:8 uses the plural for the class of matter a village bench may have to send upward: divrei rivot bi-she'arekha, matters of dispute within your gates. ⭐ The word is also the prophets' technical term for a covenant LAWSUIT, God's own case against his people — Hosea 4:1 and Micah 6:2 both open a legal proceeding with it, and Micah's summons the mountains as the jury. So the same noun covers a boundary quarrel between two farmers and the largest trial the prophets can imagine. ⚠ The verb gives Meribah its name, the place where Israel disputed with Jehovah (Exodus 17:7) — a quarrel remembered as a legal one, not merely a complaint. ⭐ Deuteronomy 19:17 supplies the singular two chapters later, and with it a picture: the two men who have the dispute shall stand before Jehovah — a riv with two bodies standing in it. ⚠ And Exodus 23:2 forbids answering al riv, in a lawsuit, so as to lean after a crowd — one verse after the Covenant Code's own ed chamas, which is the other half of Deuteronomy 19's courtroom vocabulary. → first discussed at Deut 17:8