Text -- Deuteronomy 21:1-4 (NET)

Laws Concerning Unsolved Murder

21:1 If a homicide victim should be found lying in a field in the land the Lord your God is giving you, and no one knows who killed him, 21:2 your elders and judges must go out and measure how far it is to the cities in the vicinity of the corpse. 21:3 Then the elders of the city nearest to the corpse must take from the herd a heifer that has not been worked– that has never pulled with the yoke– 21:4 and bring the heifer down to a wadi with flowing water, to a valley that is neither plowed nor sown. There at the wadi they are to break the heifer’s neck.

Commentary -- Verse Notes / Footnotes

NET Notes: Deu 21:1

¹ tn Heb “slain [one].” The term חָלָל (khalal) suggests something other than a natural death (cf. Num 19:16; 23:24; Jer 51:52; Ezek 26:15; 30:24; 31:17-18).

² tn The Hebrew text includes “to possess it,” but this has not been included in the translation for stylistic reasons.

³ tn Heb “struck,” but in context a fatal blow is meant; cf. NLT “who committed the murder.”

NET Notes: Deu 21:2

¹ tn Heb “surrounding the slain [one].”

NET Notes: Deu 21:3

¹ tn Heb “slain [one].”

NET Notes: Deu 21:4

¹ tn The combination “a wadi with flowing water” is necessary because a wadi (נַחַל, nakhal) was ordinarily a dry stream or riverbed. For this ritual, however, a perennial stream must be chosen so that there would be fresh, rushing water.

² sn The unworked heifer, fresh stream, and uncultivated valley speak of ritual purity – of freedom from human contamination.