21:1-9 - If a man is found slain, lying in a field in the land the Lord your God is giving you to possess, and it is not known who killed him, your elders and judges shall go out and measure the distance from the body to the neighbouring towns. Then the elders of the town nearest the body shall take a heifer that has never been worked and has never worn a yoke and lead her down to a valley that has not been ploughed or planted and where there is a flowing stream. There in the valley they are to break the heifer's neck. The priests, the sons of Levi, shall step forward, for the Lord your God has chosen them to minister and to pronounce blessings in the name of the Lord and to decide all cases of dispute and assault. Then all the elders of the town nearest the body shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the valley, and they shall declare: "Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it done. Accept this atonement for your people Israel, whom you have redeemed, O Lord, and do not hold your people guilty of the blood of an innocent man." And the bloodshed will be atoned for. So you will purge from yourselves the guilt of shedding innocent blood, since you have done what is right in the eyes of the Lord.
Few instructions in Deuteronomy will strike the modern reader as more baffling as this. Involving the case of a slain body found in some outlying field, ancient Israel may not have the technical sophistication of modern forensic science to determine who killed the victim, but that does not permit her to remain indifferent towards it.
"It is not known who killed him" (v1) may assume some preliminary but inconclusive investigation have already been conducted. Since the responsibility for the ritual instructed here falls eventually to "the elders of the town nearest the body" (v3), "your elders and judges" in v2 would presumably mean those who first come to know of the death. Their determination of the nearest town and the assignment of responsibility to its elders means that there is no "passing around of the buck" or given the run-around, such as we often encounter in so many law enforcement offices around the world. While the mechanics of the rite—calling for the neck of a heifer to be broken and the elders to wash their hands over it and to declare their innocence (vv4-8)—is clear enough, its kinetics is uncertain. The heifer does not seem to be a sacrifice, even though the ritual calls for a declaration of atonement made and a purging of guilt. There is no shedding of blood, for example, so how is atonement effected? Nor is an altar erected for the killing. Furthermore, the role of the priests is not clarified. Perhaps it is best to understand the killing of the heifer as a symbolic reenactment of the murder.1 This provides a meaningful context for understanding the elders� declaration that "our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it done" (v7). But this rite—involving so much from those in the upper echelon of society, a young heifer that has never worked and never worn a yoke, a valley that has never been plowed or planted with a flowing stream nearby (there could not have been very many of these in Israel)—makes for extraordinary efforts. Why go to all the length of this logistical hassle over one unknown victim? We live in a age where deaths, unless it strikes someone we love or know, are mere statistics—we wake up to the morning newspapers with reports of thousands killed each day. The length to which Deuteronomy would put Israel to for just one unknown death indicts us on our jagged indifference towards the loss of a human life. This ruling reminds us that what we do for one death reflects what we think of life. But, if this is what Deuteronomy requires for one unknown dead person, it is little wonder that he who is greater than Moses, who drank so deeply from this book, should so naturally leave the ninety-nine to go look for the one that was lost.
Low Chai Hok
©Alberith, 2017