2Ki 25:2). In Deu 20:20 it is used to denote the object, viz., the means of hemming in a town, i.e., the besieging rampart (cf. Eze 4:2). The reason for grouping together these five laws, which are apparently so different from one another, as well as for attaching them to the previous regulations, is to be found in the desire to bring out distinctly the sacredness of life and of personal rights from every point of view, and impress it upon the covenant nation.
Chap. 21
verses 1-2
Expiation of a Murder Committed by an Unknown Hand. - Deu 21:1 and Deu 21:2. If any one was found lying in a field in the land of Israel (נפל fallen, then lying, Jdg 3:25; Jdg 4:22), having been put to death without its being known who had killed him (וגו נודע לא, a circumstantial clause, attached without a copula, see Ewald, §341, b. 3), the elders and judges, sc., of the neighbouring towns, - the former as representatives of the communities, the latter as administrators of right, - were to go out and measure to the towns which lay round about the slain man, i.e., measure the distance of the body from the towns that were lying round about, to ascertain first of all which was the nearest town.
verses 3-4
This nearest town was then required to expiate the blood-guiltiness, not only because the suspicion of the crime or of participation in the crime fell soonest upon it, but because the guilt connected with the shedding of innocent blood rested as a burden upon it before all others. To this end the elders were to take a heifer (young cow), with which no work had ever been done, and which had not yet drawn in the yoke, i.e., whose vital force had not been diminished by labour (see at Num 19:2), and bring it down into a brook-valley with water constantly flowing, and there break its neck. The expression, “it shall be that the city,” is more fully defined by “the elders of the city shall take.” The elders were to perform the act of expiation in the name of the city. As the murderer was not to be found, an animal was to be put to death in his stead, and suffer the punishment of the murderer. The slaying of the animal was not an expiatory sacrifice, and consequently there was no slaughtering and sprinkling of the blood; but, as the mode of death, viz., breaking the neck (vid., Exo 13:13), clearly
