Deuteronomy 21:4

The elders of that city shall bring down the heifer unto a rough valley,.... Cities being generally built on hills, and so had adjacent valleys, to which there was a descent; but here a rough valley,

Then thy elders and thy judges shall come forth, and they shall measure unto the cities which are round about him that is slain: No JFB commentary on these verses.

Neither eared nor sown; partly to represent the hard and unprofitable and untutored heart of the murderer; and partly that such a desert and horrid place might beget a horror of murder and of the murderer. Strike off the heifer’ s neck, to show what they would and should have done to the murderer if they had found him.

Deuteronomy 21:4 And the elders of that city shall bring down the heifer unto a rough valley, which is neither eared nor sown, and shall strike off the heifer’ s neck there in the valley:Ver. 4. Which is neither eared nor sown.] That is, that afterwards should neither be tilled nor sown, for horror and hatred of the innocent blood there spilled. So the mountains of Gilboah.

XXI. Deuteronomy 21:1-9. .(1) If one be found slain—It is remarkable that in our own time the most effectual remedy against outrages of which the perpetrators cannot be discovered is a fine upon the district in which they occur. (2) Thy elders and thy judges shall come forth.—Rashi says these were to be special commissioners, members of the great Sanhedrin. (3-4) An heifer, which hath not been wrought with . . . a rough valley which is neither eared nor sown.—Rashi’s note on this is curious: “The Holy One, blessed be He! said, ‘A yearling heifer which hath borne no fruit shall come and be beheaded in a place which yieldeth no fruit, to atone for the murder of the man whom they did not suffer to bear fruit.’ Some have thought that the valley was neither to be eared (ploughed) nor sown from that time forward.” The verbs are not past in the Hebrew, and the words may bear this meaning. If so, the district in which the murder occurred would be mulcted in that portion of land for ever. (5) And the priests.—See on Deuteronomy 21:8. (7) Our hands have not shed this blood, neither have our eyes seen it.—“Not that the chief magistrates of the city are supposed to have shed this blood; but that they have not contrived or procured the murder by any maintenance or partnership in the deed” (Rashi). We cannot but feel how impossible such solemn public declarations would be if the murderer had been harboured by the inhabitants of the place. (8) Be merciful, O Lord.—In the sense of the publican’s prayer in St. Luke 18 “be propitiated,” literally, cover. The mercy seat is the “covering” of the Law, which protects Israel from it. The sacrifices are a “covering” for the sinner from a punishment of sin. According to Rashi, the prayer in the eighth verse is spoken by the priests; and it seems probable enough. No part in the transaction is assigned to them, unless it be this. And their presence was certainly necessary. And the blood shall be forgiven them.—Literally, shall be covered for them. Not the same expression as Leviticus 4:20; Leviticus 4:26; Leviticus 4:31; Leviticus 4:35. But we can hardly follow the Jewish commentators into the question whether, if the perpetrator of the murder were afterwards discovered, the blood of the heifer which had been shed already could be allowed to atone for it, so that the murderer need not be punished.

Verse 4. Shall bring down the heifer unto a rough valley] נחל איתן nachal eythan might be translated a rapid stream, probably passing through a piece of uncultivated ground where the elders of the city were to strike off the head of the heifer, and to wash their hands over her in token of their innocence. The spot of ground on which this sacrifice was made must be uncultivated, because it was considered to be a sacrifice to make atonement for the murder, and consequently would pollute the land. This regulation was calculated to keep murder in abhorrence, and to make the magistrates alert in their office, that delinquents might be discovered and punished, and thus public expense saved.

4. the elders of that city] Luc. omits. a valley with running water] i.e. with a perennial brook, cp. Amos 5:24 (and see Driver’s note here). The running water is usually explained as meant to carry off the blood, but no blood is mentioned; unless it was so in the original law (see introd. note). The primitive idea was rather the checking of a demon or of the spirit of the slain man. Cp. the belief in the preference of spirits for dry places (Luke 11:24) and their aversion to running water (in modern times that ghosts cannot cross bridges, e.g. Tam o’ Shanter). neither plowed nor sown] therefore unprofaned by common use, and so meet for a solemn rite. Dillm. (after Ewald): ‘that the soaked-in blood of the beast, vicariously killed, may not hereafter be uncovered by the cultivation of the ground but rather washed away by the brook.’ See however, the previous note. Some object the impossibility of finding an uncultivated valley with a running stream, but there are many such. shall break the heifer’s neck] The same procedure as J, Exodus 13:13; Exodus 34:20, enjoins for the firstling of an ass not redeemed; cp. Isaiah 66:3, of a dog. In these cases there does not appear to have been shedding of the blood such as took place in all sacrifices proper. This is singular if the killing of the heifer was a piaculum. In the original ceremony was it only conceived as a piece of sympathetic magic, symbolic of the execution of the murderer, and did D transform this into an expiation? Or, conversely, was the original ceremony a sacrifice, and did D, on his principle that sacrifice was valid only at the One Altar, reduce it to the level of the treatment of the firstling of an ass? In Leviticus 4:13-21 (P), the piaculum for an inadvertent sin of the whole congregation, it is also the elders who slay the victim.

Eared - i. e., plowed; compare Genesis 45:6 note and references. The word is derived from the Latin, and is in frequent use by English writers of the fifteenth and two following centuries.

4. A rough valley — The Hebrew term which is here rendered valley also means a stream, and many critics have rendered the expression a perennial stream. Neither eared nor sown — Eared is the old term for ploughed.