Chapters from, the Biblical Law. seek forgiveness for the blood guiltiness that rested on the community because of the un avenged crime. The antiquity of this cere mony is attested by the fact that the heifer is not killed in the usual manner but has its neck broken; and furthermore, by the sym bolic act of washing the hands over the car cass. Among the ancients, before courts of record were established and written records took the place of the memory of the wit nesses, symbolic acts were the usual methods of fixing important facts in the memory of the community. There are other sugges tions in this procedure that must have some meaning, but their true reason escapes us. Why the animal must be a heifer which has n;vcr done any work, and why the sacrifice must be made in a rough valley are problems which I am not now prepared to solve. It is not improbable that in these requirements we may find survivals of the old beliefs and forms of sacrifice that antedated the adoption of the monotheistic cult of Jehovah, with its great central sanctuary at Jerusalem. I have purposely omitted the fifth verse of our text, because its introduction breaks the continuity of the account. It is as follows : "And the priests the sons of Levi shall come near, for them hath Jehovah thy God chosen to minister unto him and to bless in the name of Jehovah; and according to their decision shall be done at every controversy and every injury." The priests are introduced here be fore the ceremony of washing the hands; they seem to have no part in the act and are in troduced because to the chronicler their pres ence seems to have been necessary to the validity of the ceremonial act. That they were not originally among the parties seems to be perfectly clear from the text. In the most ancient times the elders of the towns were the only functionaries known, and the ceremony goes back to the most ancient times long before either the kingdom or the
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hierarchy was organized. The elders are the only legitimate functionaries here; both the " judges," who wefe the crown officials, and the " priests " are later additions to the ceremonies. It may be that under the ancient custom if the slayer was discovered after the cere mony of expiation, he could take refuge be hind the ceremony of expiation and claim exemption from the punishment by reason of the fact that the elders of his town had pub licly atoned for the crime, and that therefore it was res adjudicata. But whether this be true or not cannot be stated with certainty. The record ends with these words : " And do thou put away (the guilt) of innocent blood from thy midst, if thou wilt do that which is right in the eyes of Jehovah." There is a Talmudic tradition that this clause was added to the Biblical record in order to provide for the punishment of the murderer, if he was discovered after the cere mony of expiation. This seems to imply that anciently the murderer could plead the ceremony of expiation in bar of the indict ment, on the principle that, after the formal inquest and declaration of innocence of the elders on behalf of the .community, and ex piatory sacrifice, the matter was ended; and that so far as the members of his community were concerned, the procedure was equiva lent to a trial and an acquittal. The strange ness of such a plea must not lead us to con clude that it was impossible, for the ancient notions of crime and punishment differed rad ically from those which now obtain. Atten tion need only be drawn to the oath of purgation known to us at old English law whereby a man might purge himself of crime by an oath supported by a sufficient number of compurgátors. Although the cases are not parallel, they have a common ejement of strangeness and remoteness from modern methods of procedure.
