📜WEB · Deuteronomy 21:4
What does Deuteronomy 21:4 mean?
"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."
— Deuteronomy 21:4 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
If someone is found slain in the land which Yahweh your God gives you to possess, lying in the field, and it isn’t known who has struck him;
then your elders and your judges shall come out, and they shall measure to the cities which are around him who is slain.
It shall be that the elders of the city which is nearest to the slain man shall take a heifer of the herd, which hasn’t been worked with, and which has not drawn in the yoke.
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 priests the sons of Levi shall come near; for them Yahweh your God has chosen to minister to him, and to bless in Yahweh’s name; and according to their word shall every controversy and every assault be decided.
All the elders of that city, who are nearest to the slain man, shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the valley.
They shall answer and say, “Our hands have not shed this blood, neither have our eyes seen it.
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