Deuteronomy 21
You shall surely bury him the same day, because he that is hanged is accursed of God
Now Moses gives instructions on how to deal with an unsolved murder, as well as taking a captive as a wife, and about protecting the land from defilement by burying those who have died.
Bible Passage:
21:1 If a person is found slain in the land which YAHWEH your God gives you to possess it, lying in the field, and it is not known who has smitten him, 2 then your elders and your judges shall come forth, and they shall measure to the cities which are round about him that is slain. 3 It shall be, that the city which is nearest to the slain man, even the elders of that city shall take a heifer of the herd, which has not been worked with, and which has not drawn in the yoke; 4 and the elders of that city shall bring down the heifer to a valley with running water, which is neither plowed nor sown, and shall break the heifer’s neck there in the valley. 5 And the priests, the sons of Levi, shall come near; for it is them YAHWEH your God has chosen to minister to him, and to bless in the name of YAHWEH; and according to their word shall every controversy and every strike be. 6 And 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; 7 and they shall answer and say, ‘Our hands have not shed this blood, neither have our eyes seen it. 8 Forgive, O YAHWEH, your people Israel, whom you have redeemed, and do not allow innocent blood to remain in the midst of your people Israel.’ And the blood shall be forgiven them. 9 So you shall put away the innocent blood from the midst of you, when you shall do that which is right in the eyes of YAHWEH.
10 When you go forth to battle against your enemies, and YAHWEH your God delivers them into your hands, and you carry them away captive, 11 and see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you have a desire for her, and would take her to you as a wife; 12 then you shall bring her home to your house. She shall shave her head, and cut her nails; 13 and she shall put the clothes of her captivity off her, and shall remain in your house, and bewail her father and her mother a full month. After that you shall go in to her, and be her husband, and she shall be your wife. 14 And it shall be, if you have no delight in her, then you shall let her go where she will; but you shall not sell her at all for money, you shall not deal with her as a slave, because you have humbled her.
15 If a man has two wives, the one beloved, and the other hated, and they have bore him children, both the beloved and the hated; and if the firstborn son is hers that was hated; 16 then it shall be, in the day that he causes his sons to inherit that which he has, that he may not make the son of the beloved the firstborn before the son of the hated, who is the firstborn. 17 But he shall acknowledge the firstborn, the son of the hated, by giving him a double portion of all that he has. For he is the beginning of his strength, the right of the firstborn is his.
18 If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son, that will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and, though they chasten him, will not listen to them; 19 then his father and his mother shall lay hold on him, and bring him out to the elders of his city, and to the gate of his place; 20 and they shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice. He is a glutton, and a drunkard.’ 21 And all the men of his city shall stone him to death with stones. So you shall put away the evil from the midst of you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.
22 And if a man has committed a sin worthy of death, and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, 23 then his body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but you shall surely bury him the same day, because he that is hanged is accursed of God; in order that you do not defile your land which YAHWEH your God gives you for an inheritance.
Reflection:
The amount of responsibility the community had for what happened in it is incredible to me. Why would anyone even consider having to atone for an unsolved murder in their city? Most of the time, we just brush that off and think it doesn’t affect us at all. But the people of Israel believed that innocent blood in the land was a defiling element upon it. We just had a murder here in my neighborhood at a beloved children’s park barely three weeks ago. I had a conversation with a friend about what our response should be as it relates to how this impacts the very city in which we live. I don’t know that we know exactly what to do spiritually when something like that happens, but I know that these things do have real effects upon the land, the city, and the community. To brush it off as unimportant is to neglect the communal duty we have to one another, and it seems the Israelites understood that.
Questions and Answers:
Question: Why does God have a bridge? [Sophia, 3]
I’m not sure what you mean by this Sophia. It must have been something we were talking about at the time, but I just can’t remember what it is. Sorry baby. Bridges are pretty cool though, a great feat of engineering. My favorite bridge in Portland, which is nicknamed “Bridgetown,” was probably St. Johns bridge, which took you from North to Northwest Portland. One bridge even opened in Portland, the year Elisha was born, called the Tilikum crossing, and it was a pedestrian bridge, but I never made the time to go walk it, though I really wanted to. And the most iconic bridge, I think, was the Burnside bridge, seeing the white stag sign was always a reminder that we were home. Anyway, getting kind of emotional about it Soph, our time in Portland was both full of suffering and one of the most beautiful times we ever had as a family. It was the place we lived the whole time I was in seminary, where I learned the Biblical languages, and ended up a grad fellow grading for Hebrew and Greek for multiple years. It was where Elisha’s miracle birth happened, and where God brought us back into the community life of the Church. I haven’t reflected on it in a long time, but those were sacred years.
Anyway, these answers kind of take on a life of their own sometimes. But I always try to make sure that I can at least have some kind of answer to tell you. Love you Sophia.
Verse 4: What does breaking the heifer’s neck have anything to do with the first 4 verses? [Gwendolyn, 9]
The heifer is acting as an atonement for the murder of the person slain out in the field. Since no one knows who actually committed the murder, the act cannot be atoned for by putting the murderer to death. Therefore, there is innocent blood defiling the land, so the heifer is meant to act as a sacrifice to cleanse the land from innocent blood being spilled upon it. That is why the elders are required to say what they say as well. They are saying they had nothing to do with the murder and know nothing about who did the murder. Then they ask God to forgive them for the spilt blood in the land and cleanse it.
Verse 12: Why do they have her shave her head and trim her nails? [Monique, 33]
There are multiple interpretations as to what this means. One, is that this was part of the mourning ritual for her parents along with the month she was supposed to grieve for them. A second interpretation is that this was meant to make the man, who saw her as beautiful, see ugliness in her, and then hopefully reject the idea of marrying a foreign pagan captive. The third interpretation, and the one I agree with, is that it is a ritual related to the start of a new life. She shaves her head, she cuts her nails, and those are tied with taking off the clothes of captivity. It symbolizes that her life as a slave is over, and she is starting a new life as the wife of an Israelite. I think this is confirmed further by the fact she is not allowed to be treated as a slave once she marries the Israelite man.
Verse 14: What does it mean to humble someone? [Gwendolyn, 9]
The Hebrew word “anah” is the word usually translated as “humble.” But it can be used in different contexts and many of them are very dark. At it’s core, the idea of the word is “to force to submit.” When we hear the word “humble,” we generally think of the character trait. If someone is humble, they are the opposite of proud. They are meek, quiet, and gentle. Those really don’t have much to do with the connotation of “anah.”
Although the word is often translated as “humble,” it is not the most common translation for “anah.” The most common translation is “to be afflicted.” It can also have the connotation of “inflicting pain upon,” or “to punish.” It is used in the context of Israel being “anah”ed in the land of Egypt, it is used when a people is “anah”ed by their enemy, and when a woman is “anah”ed by a man. The implication of the word in sexual connotations is to rape a woman. It is the word used in Genesis 34, Judges 19, and 2 Samuel 13, all three of the rape stories that I can think of in the Scriptures. There may be more, but those are the three major ones. The rape of Dinah, the Levite’s concubine, and Amnon and Tamar respectively. Like I said, it is a dark word.
But the connotation here is actually not one of rape, but of marriage. Again, YAHWEH is so protective and good towards people. The woman has been “anah”ed not because she was raped, which YAHWEH would not allow to happen in his law, but because she was “anah”ed along with her people when she was “forced to submit” in defeat and subjected to captivity. If an Israelite man sees a beautiful woman who is of a captive people, he can decide to marry her. He must first give her, as a slave by the way, a month to mourn her parents. Then, he can take her into his house as a wife. If he later decides he doesn’t want her as a wife, he can no longer just sell her, or treat her like a slave, because she was forced to be his wife. He must simply let her go on her way. These considerations are unheard of for a defeated, captive people.
I want to go back to “anah” for a minute though, before we move on. “Anah” does also mean the character trait “humble,” and is used in that way scripturally. But our understanding of it should be based on everything we just talked about. To be humble is to be “self-afflicted,” or “to force yourself to submit.” The character trait is about knowing your status, particularly in relation to who YAHWEH is. It is the opposite of what it means to be puffed up or arrogant. It is in this condition of heart, being lowly, where God can choose to honor and exalt you, rather than doing that in your own mind for yourself.
Verse 20: What is a glutton? [Gwendolyn, 9]
So gluttony in English is essentially the sin of eating excessively, without self-control and in overindulgence. Gluttony is like greed for what the body wants to eat. So, a glutton is someone who commits that sin.
In Hebrew, the connection of gluttony with the root word here, “zalal,” is more tenuous. Properly, “zalal” means “to make light” of something or “to be worthless.” On a handful of occasions, “zalal” is used parallel with drunkenness, so the connection could be food and drink, which is where we get the idea of “gluttonous.” Only once in the Bible, is the food mentioned explicitly with “zalal” and that is in Proverbs 23:20, where they are said to be “zalal” eaters of meat. So it’s possible, but not certain that it refers to gluttony.
Recording of the Passage:
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