Editor’s Note: This is an edited excerpt from Trent Casto’s commentary on Deuteronomy, published earlier this month by P&R Publishing as part of the Reformed Expository Commentary series. ByFaith readers can use the discount code CASREC to receive a 40% discount when they purchase the commentary at prpbooks.com.
The woman and her husband had done a dastardly deed. They killed a man in cold blood in their pursuit of prestige, position, and power. They got what they wanted. They had power to command armies and power to destroy their enemies, but they had no power to cleanse their consciences of the guilt of innocent blood. Upon returning from the murder, the husband looked at his bloody hands and asked, “Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?” The answer, of course, was no. While the wife was more ruthless than her husband in the beginning, by the end, the blood on her hands had driven her mad.
At one point, a physician came to observe the lady at night when she was sleepwalking. The lady rose from her bed and though her eyes were open, she was not awake. She made her way to the wash basin and began to wash her hands, talking to herself along the way. “Yet here’s a spot…Out, damned spot! out, I say!…What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?—Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him…Here’s the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.” After observing her condition, the doctor concluded: “unnatural deeds do breed unnatural troubles: infected minds to their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets: More needs she the divine than the physician.”1
In his play “Macbeth,” William Shakespeare captures the reality of the guilt of innocent blood. What can wash away the stain Lady Macbeth has on her hands? And what about the stain on the rest of the community? This conundrum is what Deuteronomy 21 was written to answer.
Deuteronomy 21:1-9 is directly connected to the sixth commandment: “You shall not kill unlawfully.” We have seen the tremendous value God places on human life throughout Deuteronomy. Human life is of such value that an unnatural death leaves a stain on the community that must be dealt with through another death. The shedding of innocent blood pollutes the community, and blood is on everyone’s hands.
If that is true, what does that mean for a nation that has shed the blood of 63 million innocent babies? What does that mean for a nation giving regular witness to mass shootings, gang violence, and one of the higher murder rates among developed nations? We can hold up our hands and say we did not do it, but does that hold up in God’s court? We may be rugged individualists who shun corporate responsibility, but what does our opinion matter to the Judge?
With an unusual passage like the one before us, we need to ask what God was teaching his covenant people through such a ritual. We know the blood of animals can never erase blood guilt. Nevertheless, this ritual was intended to teach something: life is of such value it cannot be taken without cost. It further teaches us that sin is not simply personal and individual, but it defiles communities and communities are responsible. Ultimately, it points us to the only final solution of blood guilt on us all.
The Problem
We are introduced to the problem that this ritual will solve in verse 1: “If in the land that the LORD your God is giving you to possess someone is found slain, lying in the open country, and it is not known who killed him…”
A person is out traveling, or perhaps a farmer is out working in the field and discovers a dead body. The word used here for “slain” (ḥālāl) indicates that this is not a case where someone was stung by bees, or had a heart attack, or otherwise collapsed on a journey. This person was obviously murdered. Deuteronomy 19:11-13 taught that if someone intentionally killed another person, the murderer must be put to death. Numbers 35:33-34 explains the absolute necessity of this:
You shall not pollute the land in which you live, for blood pollutes the land, and no atonement can be made for the land for the blood that is shed in it, except by the blood of the one who shed it. You shall not defile the land in which you live, in the midst of which I dwell, for I the LORD dwell in the midst of the people of Israel.
Blood pollutes the land. Atonement needs to be made for the blood shed, but the only sufficient atonement is the blood of the one who shed it. In some ancient cultures, money could be paid in exchange for a life. But not in Israel. Those guilty of willful and intentional murder must be executed, not only because of the pollution of blood in the land, but because it is the price for snuffing the life from the image of God (Genesis 9:6).
While we are not under the same code of ritual purity as Israel was, we have some awareness of the way blood pollutes. Think, for example, of how we would feel if a realtor were showing us a home saying, “By the way, you should know that someone was murdered here.” It would have a different feel, would it not? So, what were the people to do when the land was polluted with blood, but they had no culprit to execute for atonement?
The Solution
When the killer was unknown, they had a procedure. First, they needed to find the nearest city. We read in verse 2, “then your elders and your judges shall come out, and they shall measure the distance to the surrounding cities.” The nearest city takes responsibility. “And the elders of the city that is nearest to the slain man shall take a heifer that has never been worked and that has not pulled in a yoke” (v. 3). A heifer is a young female cow that has not borne a calf. The Hebrew word ‘eglah may not directly translate to the English word “heifer,” and the Christian Standard Bible is right to translate it as “young cow.” The most important point is that this cow also must never have pulled a yoke. While not stated, apparently putting a yoke on the animal contaminates it and this ritual requires an unblemished specimen.2 A female cow that has never been used for work was utilized for this ceremony to represent innocence and purity.
Verse 4 gives instructions for what to do with this heifer: “And the elders of that city shall bring the heifer down to a valley with running water, which is neither plowed nor sown, and shall break the heifer’s neck there in the valley.” The valley with running water refers to a place that is not just seasonally running with water but has a perpetual source of water flowing through.3 The land is not cultivated in any way. The reasons for this are not clear, though the unworked land may be a parallel to the cow that has never been worked, but the remoteness of the location is important, far from human habitation to avoid further pollution with blood. The continually flowing stream may indicate that if any blood was accidentally spilled in the performing of this ritual, it would be immediately washed away.4
At this remote location, the elders were to break the neck of the cow. There are five leading ideas about why this is to be done. Jeffrey Tigay sums up the options:
…it is either “a sacrifice, a symbolic or vicarious execution of the murderer, the representation of the penalty the elders will suffer if their confession of innocence is not true, the means of preventing the animal laden with guilt from returning to the community, or a reenactment of the murder which removes blood pollution from the inhabited to an uninhabited area.”5
Given the context, we may be predisposed to see this as a sacrifice that atones for sin. However, everything about the description of the killing suggests otherwise: The priests are not the ones killing the animal; they do not kill the animal at an altar; breaking the neck was not a sacrificial way to kill an animal;6 no one sprinkles the blood; and the sacrifice is neither eaten nor burned. If this is a sacrifice, it runs contrary to all the other ones.
But if it is not a sacrifice, how can atonement be made? We will have to hold that question for the moment as we exercise care not to force the text into saying something we think it should say, rather than what it actually says. Most likely it is either a symbolic execution of the murderer or it is a reenactment of the murder itself.
One way of attempting to explain this ritual is by asking who or what the innocent and unblemished cow represents: does it represent the innocent victim, or does it represent the murderer? The innocence and purity of the cow is a strong clue, but first, another group is present at the killing of the cow that must be acknowledged. We read in verse 5, “Then the priests, the sons of Levi, shall come forward, for the LORD your God has chosen them to minister to him and to bless in the name of the LORD, and by their word every dispute and every assault shall be settled.” While the priests are present at the killing of the cow, they do not kill the cow which again confirms that this should not be seen as a sacrifice. Instead, they are there to function in their judicial capacity because “by their word every dispute and every assault shall be settled” (Deut. 21:5) (cf. Deut. 17:8-12).
The priests are there to hand down the decision regarding guilt or innocence and settle the matter. This gives a further clue to the meaning of the ritual. It makes more sense that they are introduced immediately after the killing of the cow because they are witnesses of the reenactment of the murder, after which they deliver their judgment, than that they appear right after the symbolic execution of the murderer to deliver their judgment of guilt or innocence. Therefore, we should see the killing of the cow as a symbolic reenactment of the murder with the cow representing the innocent victim.
Such an explanation makes the most sense of what the elders then say in verses 6-7, “And all the elders of that city nearest to the slain man shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the valley, and they shall testify, ‘Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it shed.’” When they say their hands did not shed “this blood,” whose blood does “this blood” refer to? They are referring to the heifer as a symbol of the innocent victim whose blood they did not shed, nor did their eyes see it shed. They wash their hands over the victim as a symbolic action that they did not do the evil deed of killing the innocent man. Meanwhile, what they say in verse 7 calls to mind the language of the courtroom.7 It says, “they shall testify, ‘Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it shed.’”
They did not kill the man, and they do not know who killed the man, therefore they cannot make atonement for it. But this does not solve the problem of blood guilt upon the people. The heifer is not an atoning sacrifice (and this is key to understanding the passage).
After the killing of the heifer, they call out to God and say, “Accept atonement, O LORD, for your people Israel, whom you have redeemed, and do not set the guilt of innocent blood in the midst of your people Israel, so that their blood guilt be atoned for” (v. 8). The translators appear to have made the mistake of understanding the killing of the heifer to be an atoning sacrifice.8 In Hebrew, the verb does not say, “Accept atonement, O LORD,” but it is an imperative verb that simply means: “Atone, O LORD!”9 (my translation). Whereas the priests are usually the ones who make atonement, in this case, God himself is the subject of the verb called upon to do what they cannot.10 The next part of the prayer is that God would not set the guilt of innocent blood upon the people.
Since God is the one who sets the guilt among them, only God can remove it. What is more, the text assures us that he will: “So you shall purge the guilt of innocent blood from your midst, when you do what is right in the sight of the LORD” (v. 9). This is the procedure by which the guilt of innocent blood will be purged from them.
God will not put the guilt of innocent blood in their midst, and their blood guilt will be atoned for. But it leaves a question unanswered: where is God going to put the blood guilt of this crime? Someone must pay. The answer to that question awaits the New Testament, though the Old Testament sacrificial system points forward to it. The ritual of the heifer provides a way for the people of God to purge the pollution of innocent blood from the community as they await the atonement for sin that only God can provide.
The Significance
What is the significance of this passage, and what is it here to teach us?
First, human life is inestimably precious, and we should treat it as such. Even though no one was present for the murder of this person, it does not mean their death does not matter. While there are many strange aspects about this ritual, what should strike us is the expected response of an entire community through its civic, judicial, and religious leaders to just one single human death.11 As our friends at the local pregnancy resource center remind us, “Every life matters.”
Additionally, this passage emphasizes just how wicked the crime of killing another human being is. As we have seen previously, this crime is so detestable that it requires the murderer to be put to death if found guilty. The value of life is upheld by taking the life of those guilty of murder. No other punishment will suffice to cleanse the land of the blood guilt upon it. But even when the murderer was not found, a kind of solemn purging still needed to take place.
Though we live in a culture of death, we cannot be people who take human death lightly. Furthermore, the command not to kill unlawfully does not only forbid the act itself, but all the steps that lead to that act, so that Jesus can say that even anger and insulting speech make us guilty of breaking the sixth commandment (Matthew 5:21-22). We must endeavor not only to keep our hands clean from unlawful killing, but our hearts as well. Are we harboring resentment? Do we have a temper that sometimes gets out of control? Are we promoting peace between our neighbors? Do we attempt to deescalate the kind of rhetoric that is so prevalent around us that could easily turn to violence? It is the peacemakers who are blessed.
Second, sin and guilt are not simply individual, but also have a communal aspect that should be dealt with communally. Raymond Brown writes:
Criminals are accountable for their crimes but they are not solely responsible for them. The murderer grew up in a family and in a wider community which accepted some responsibility for his welfare and education. Was the life of his family happy and harmonious? Did his parents love him deeply?…Before he could read a word, the example of his parents was eloquent. Was he taught God’s word: “You shall not murder”, “Do not hate your brother”, or “bear a grudge … but love your neighbour as yourself”?12
Some of us will recoil at the idea of any corporate responsibility for one person’s crimes. But it is quite biblical. Our families and communities shape us, and each of us has a part in forming the identity of those communities.
Robert “Bobby” Crimo III was arrested for shooting up Fourth of July parade-goers in Highland Park, Illinois. As details began to emerge about the killer, the reports about his family upbringing were not pretty. As an infant, his mother pleaded guilty to leaving the two-year-old in a burning hot car in a parking lot. Records show that police made visits to the house nearly 20 times between 2009 and 2014. Nine of those calls were for reports of domestic violence. At one point, authorities had labeled Bobby a “clear and present danger” for threatening to kill all his relatives.
Within three months of that incident, his father sponsored Bobby’s gun license application so he could purchase four guns, including the one used to murder seven people on July 4. When the press asked Bobby’s dad about sharing any responsibility for this crime, his dad said, “They make me like I groomed him to do all this…I’ve been here my whole life, and I’m gonna stay here, hold my head up high, because I didn’t do anything wrong.”13 On one level, we can all agree that the elder Crimo did not pull any triggers. At the same time, we recognize that there is blood on his hands. But is he the only one who shares guilt?
Again, Raymond Brown points out what we are too quick to overlook when something like this happens:
When things go wrong, people soon point the finger of bitter accusation. A public crime has been committed and such sins of commission must be punished. But what of those serious sins of omission which may have led up to the crime? Many things may not have been done for the offender, or they may have been poorly done. If he had been helped lovingly, that solitary man, hiding in the community, tormented by his guilt, might have been in peace.14
In other words, Bobby Crimo should be executed for shedding innocent blood. But the whole community, starting with his parents, should be asking questions about whether they were doing what they could to see to it that the Bobby Crimos of the world do not become mass shooters. Of course, asking these kinds of questions is painful because it feels like all it will do is lead us to an overwhelming sense of guilt. It might. But perhaps this is exactly what we should feel so that we could come to a place of corporate repentance for creating a culture of death. Like it or not, we are a part of a culture that glorifies violence and devalues human life. We are reaping what we have sown.15 Such knowledge would be too overwhelming for most of us to live with, except for the third thing we see.
Third, God has made provision for full atonement of our blood guilt through the work of Christ. Some of us still do not feel that corporate guilt is a particularly pressing problem. But remember, we are part of a people who have murdered 63 million children since 1973, as of the time of this writing. Are our hands clean? We are a part of a people who took our country by violence and have committed a great deal of violence since then. Has all that bloodshed been justified, or might the guilt of innocent blood be on our hands? Or consider the ongoing violence in our country through the use of gun, knife, and fist – do we share any corporate responsibility for these evils in our land? Biblically speaking, we do. But even if we did not, we still carry the guilt of our own sins.
We carry the guilt of sexual sin. We carry the guilt of having known about evil deeds that were being done and not doing what we could to stop it. We carry the guilt of dishonesty and theft. We carry the guilt of the mistakes we made in raising our children and the way we see those mistakes expressing themselves in the lives of our adult children or grandchildren. What can we do with our guilt? How can we cleanse our hands of the blood?16 We cannot. The prophet Jeremiah writes, “Though you wash yourself with lye and use much soap, the stain of your guilt is still before me, declares the Lord GOD” (Jeremiah 2:22). We cannot cleanse ourselves of our guilt. That “damned spot” will not be washed off our consciences no matter how hard we scrub or how severely we beat ourselves up. Only through repentance and God’s forgiveness can guilt be taken away. Even that forgiveness is based on a real atonement. Someone must pay for our sins. Any substitute must be innocent, otherwise they have their own blood guilt to die for.
The New Testament refers to the concept of innocent blood twice in the same chapter. In Matthew 27:4, Judas confesses to betraying “innocent blood” in reference to Jesus. Then, when Jesus was before Pilate and the people were clamoring for his crucifixion, we read, “So when Pilate saw that he was gaining nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, ‘I am innocent of this man’s blood; see to it yourselves.’ And all the people answered, ‘His blood be on us and on our children!’” (Matthew 27:24-25).
Why did Pilate wash his hands? He did so because he knew he was guilty, though he was claiming innocence. The people likewise accept responsibility for the blood guilt of the crucifixion of Jesus. They are responsible for killing an innocent man (Luke 23:47). The innocent blood will cry out for vengeance; it requires death (Genesis 9:5). Except this blood is different. In fact, this death of Jesus will provide the answer to the question of where the guilt of all the ages will ultimately be placed.
When Jesus’ blood is shed, it cries out a different message than “Vengeance!” Hebrews 12:24 says of Christians that “[You have come to] Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.” The blood of Christ speaks a better word than the blood of Abel, than the blood of our slain unborn children, than the blood of those wrongfully killed, than the blood of our nation’s history of violence. All that blood cries for vengeance; it cries for the guilty to be put to death. But the blood of Christ cries out for mercy and forgiveness for his killers.
In the ritual of the broken-necked heifer, the people of God acknowledge their helplessness to atone for sin, and so they cry out to God to atone for what they cannot. The blood of Christ is God’s answer for the guilt upon God’s people. As the hymn writer William Cowper wrote, “There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Immanuel’s veins, and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.”17 Like the perpetually flowing stream in which the elders symbolically wash away their guilt, Christ’s blood perpetually washes away our guilt.
What can wash away our sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. The only agent strong enough to cleanse us from the guilt of innocent blood is the blood of Jesus. If we are aware of our guilty stains today, if we long to be clean, then we must plunge ourselves beneath the cleansing flow of Jesus’ blood and let all our guilty stains be washed away once and for all. There is power in this blood! The stains that nothing else can cleanse, Jesus’ blood can. The guilt of innocent blood is upon us all. But hallelujah, the cleansing power of the blood of Jesus is greater still! What can wash away our sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
Trent Casto serves as senior pastor at Covenant Church of Naples (PCA).
1 William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 1.
2 Daniel I. Block, Deuteronomy, The NIV Application Commentary, ed. Terry Muck (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004), 489.
3 The only other use of this phrase naḥal ʾêtān translated “running water” in Deuteronomy 21:4 is translated as “ever-flowing stream” in Amos 5:24, “But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”
4 Yitzhaq Feder, “Breaking the Heifer’s Neck: A Bloodless Ritual for an Unsolved Murder,” TheTorah.com (2018). https://thetorah.com/article/breaking-the-heifers-neck-a-bloodless-ritual-for-an-unsolved-murder.
5 D.P. Wright, “Deuteronomy 21:1-9 as a Rite of Elimination,” CBQ 49 (1987): 387-403 as cited in Jeffrey H. Tigay, Deuteronomy, The JPS Torah Commentary, eds. Nahum M. Sarna and Chaim Potok (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1996), 473.
6 We cannot underestimate the significance of the method of putting the heifer to death. Why are they explicitly commanded to break its neck? The only other place where God’s people are commanded to break the neck of an animal is Exodus 13:13, “Every firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb, or if you will not redeem it you shall break its neck. Every firstborn of man among your sons you shall redeem.” A donkey was inadmissible as an offering and so this prescribed form of killing makes it very clear that the donkey is not a sacrifice. [Nahum M. Sarna, Exodus, The JPS Torah Commentary, eds. Nahum M. Sarna and Chaim Potok (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1991), 67.] The same would seem to be the case here in Deuteronomy 21.
7 The word is ʿānâ and it does not always mean to witness in a courtroom, but it makes the most sense in this context. See BDB, s.v. “עָנָה,” 773.
8 They are not the only ones. The NIV uses the equally unhelpful, “Accept this atonement.” The CSB gets it right here: “Lord, wipe away the guilt of your people Israel whom you redeemed.”
9 The verb kpr is piel imperative. “It is conceived that God in his sovereignty may himself provide an atonement or covering for men and their sins which could not be provided by men.” BDB, s.v. “כפר,” 497.
10 Block, Deuteronomy, 491.
11 Christopher Wright, Deuteronomy, New International Biblical Commentary, eds. Robert L. Hubbard Jr. and Robert K. Johnston (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2007), 233.
12 Raymond Brown, The Message of Deuteronomy, The Bible Speaks Today, ed. J. A. Motyer (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 204-205.
13 Haley Brown and Gabrielle Fonrouge, “Crimo dad washes hands of guilt but talked with son about a mass shooting night before Highland Park massacre” New York Post, published July 6, 2022 and accessed July 13, 2022 at https://nypost.com/2022/07/06/highland-park-shooter-robert-crimo-father-speaks-about-son/.
14 Brown, The Message of Deuteronomy, 205.
15 Interestingly, the 19th century American abolitionist John Brown had a very strong sense of America’s corporate guilt over slavery that motivated his efforts to free the slaves. He is best known for storming the armory at Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, in order to secure weapons to forcibly bring an end to American slavery. His last words before he was executed were written on a note and handed to a guard just before his death: “The sins of this land will not be purged away but with blood.” The American Civil War seems to have been the fulfillment of Brown’s pronouncement.
16 In later Judaism, a number of practices and rites developed to deal with guilt, some of which may have arisen from this passage. Specifically, something called the Ten Days of Penitence. According to Jewish scholar, Jeffrey Tigay, the Ten Days of Penitence involved the following six elements: (1) Prayers for forgiveness and (2) confession of guilt from a month before Rosh Hashanah through Yom Kippur. (3) Tashlikh, which involved going to a body of water and reciting Micah 7:19, “You will hurl all their sins into the depth of the sea” and other prayers while shaking out one’s pockets. (4) Kapparot, which involved swinging a hen or rooster around over one’s head for a day or two before Yom Kippur and reciting, “A life for a life…this is my substitute, this is my replacement, this is my atonement; this hen/rooster shall go to death but I shall go on to a long and pleasant life and peace,” and then the animal is slaughtered, its intestines thrown to the birds, and the rest donated to the poor. (5) Malkot which is ritual flagellation practiced by some Jews before Yom Kippur. (6) Fasting on Yom Kippur and at other times between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. Tigay concludes, “Like the ceremony of the broken-necked heifer, these prayers and ritual actions are complementary means of expiating guilt. In both cases, it is because expiation of guilt is so vital that numerous means were employed and redundance was not only disregarded but was considered a virtue.” [Tigay, Deuteronomy, 475-476.] And yet, still the feelings of guilt remain because there is only one way the stain of guilt can be removed: Jesus.
17 William Cowper, “There is a Fountain Filled with Blood” (1771). Public Domain.