For some extra clarification on our text today, we'll take a quick look back at Numbers 35:33-34 which says, "Do not pollute the land where you are. Bloodshed pollutes the land, and atonement cannot be made for the land on which blood has been shed, except by the blood of the one who shed it. Do not defile the land where you live and where I dwell, for I, the Lord, dwell among the Israelites." In ancient Israel's justice system, the one who sheds someone else's blood is to pay for his crime by losing his life. We've seen this principle stated before in Exodus 21:23-25, Leviticus 24:19-21, and Deuteronomy 19:21. It was the law that anyone who deliberately caused someone's injury or death was to be punished with that same injury or with death.
The punishment is to fit the crime and there is a sense of poetic justice about that. It doesn't heal the injured person's injuries and it doesn't bring the murdered person back to life but in a fallen world it's as close as the judicial system can get to handing down a sentence that at least somewhat satisfies the need for closure. When the injured party or when the loved ones of a murder victim can see the perpetrator paying a penalty for his wickedness, it does not restore what was lost but it prevents a wicked person from living and enjoying the things he prevented someone else from living and enjoying.
There is something more going on in today's passage than the need of the injured party or the loved ones of a murder victim to see justice done, though. There's the fact that sin pollutes the earth and all life on the earth. The reason we can't live forever in these human bodies is because sin came into the world and affected everything in the world. The reason we have troubles and cares in our lives is because sin came into the world and caused a distance between man and God, a brokenness of man's relationship to his fellow man, the need to work in order to eat and to provide for our families, and sad occurrences such as illnesses and accidents and deaths. From the moment Adam sinned in the Garden of Eden, he was destined to die and so was everyone who came after him. As we noted when we studied the earlier books of the Bible, as the earth became more and more polluted by sin the lifespans of human beings became shorter. In the earlier books of the Bible we found people living hundreds of years but the pollution of sin has taken its toll on the earth just like a poison released into the environment. Now, instead of living 930 years like the man who first sinned, our lifespans are typically somewhere between 70 and 100 years.
Sin pollutes the earth and there's no greater physical sin a person can commit against another than taking that person's life. That's why the Lord said to Cain after he killed his brother Abel, "Your brother's blood cries out to Me from the ground." (Genesis 4:10) Why was Abel's blood crying out? I think it was crying out for justice. No matter how carefully Cain may have concealed his crime, and even if he cleaned up the murder scene so well that even today's forensic experts couldn't find the smallest trace of blood, Abel's blood was very visible to the Lord. It was like a stain He couldn't help seeing every time He looked down upon the earth. And I think that's what's going on today in our text. The blood of murder victims cries out to the Lord for justice. When the crime of murder is unsolvable by human beings, there is no way to atone for it by the shedding of the blood of the perpetrator. But the ground remains polluted by this stain which cannot be erased until justice is served. Since justice may never be served by a human court of law, it will be served when the perpetrator stands someday before the judgment seat of the Lord, but until then something has to be done about this stain. Something has to be done to express the grief of a community that was unable to prevent such a crime or solve the crime. Something must be done to acknowledge the sinfulness of man as a race and the sinfulness of one wicked person in particular. Something must be done in order to restore the ground for use.
"If someone is found slain, lying in a field in the land the Lord your God is giving you to possess, and it is not known who the killer was, your elders and judges shall go out and measure the distance from the body to the neighboring towns. Then the elders of the town nearest the body shall take a heifer that has never been worked and has never worn a yoke and lead it down to a valley that has not been plowed or planted and where there is a flowing stream. There in the valley they are to break the heifer's neck. The Levitical priests shall step forward, for the Lord your God has chosen them to minister and to pronounce blessings in the name of the Lord and to decide all cases of dispute and assault. Then all the elders of the town nearest the body shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the valley, and they shall declare: 'Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it done. Accept this atonement for Your people Israel, whom You have redeemed, Lord, and do not hold Your people guilty for the blood of an innocent person.' Then the bloodshed will be atoned for, and you will have purged from yourselves the guilt of shedding innocent blood, since you have done what is right in the eyes of the Lord." (Deuteronomy 21:1-9) I told you this passage would strike us as strange and, although I consulted many commentaries regarding it, no perfectly satisfactory explanation for this ritual was found. We can't be certain exactly how the killing of the heifer (not by the normal method of sacrifice but by breaking its neck) cleansed the ground or made atonement for a crime for which there was no suspect who could be brought to trial and condemned to death.
The best we can do is discuss the specifics of verses 1-9. First, we must assume that every effort has been made to solve the crime. I believe it's only when every avenue of investigation has been exhausted that the crime becomes an official "cold case". Part of the reason why the priests and elders must take part in the atonement ceremony is to acknowledge the social responsibility of the community to bring murderers to justice and to admit their inability to do so in this case.
Jurisdiction is established by measuring the distance between the body and the nearest towns. The closest town has jurisdiction over the case. Once the case has been deemed unsolvable with the current evidence at hand, the elders of the town that has jurisdiction are to take part in the ritual outlined in verses 1-9.
These men break the neck of the heifer, signifying that they understand and agree with the principle of "a life for a life" but also signifying that they cannot at this time carry out capital punishment upon the person who took the life of his fellow man. Since Numbers 35:33-34 told us land cannot be cleansed of the blood shed upon it except by taking the life of the person who took his fellow man's life, a stand-in is required. The heifer is the stand-in. I assume that if the murderer is ever caught and convicted later on, capital punishment can still be carried out upon him, but until then the patch of land upon which blood was shed cannot be used for anything unless it is atoned for through the ritual we're studying today. The Lord doesn't want any portion of the promised land rendered unusable.
I feel that carrying out the ritual near a flowing stream symbolizes the washing away of this guilt from the community. As the water flows away from the site of the ritual, symbolically it's taking guilt away with it, preventing the judgment of the Lord from falling upon the community for their inability as a society to prevent such a crime and their inability to solve the crime. The elders then wash their hands over the heifer to indicate their innocence of any wrongdoing in this matter. They are not personally guilty of the person's death and they are not guilty of failing to investigate the crime to the best of their human ability. They ask the Lord to absolve them of any personal or corporate wrongdoing and to restore the land for use and to remove any stain of sin from them as a nation.
Whether or not the ritual described in our passage today makes full and satisfactory sense to us, I think we can all understand why the community as a whole should feel grieved by the crime of murder. I think we can all understand the concept of "corporate responsibility": the responsibility of a society to maintain law and order and the responsibility to investigate crimes as well as is humanly possible. It ought to make us feel sorrowful when our fellow man takes the life of another (or when someone takes the lives of a whole group of people at once, such as in bombings or mass shootings). It ought to make us ask, "How have we gone wrong, as a society, that we didn't see this coming? Why were we unable to recognize the signs in order to help this person before he got to the point of wanting to kill his fellow man?" We should mourn every murder that takes place upon the earth, whether the murderer is caught or whether the crime is unsolved. We should grieve loss of life. We should grieve the fact that there are persons who think it's alright for them to rob innocent people of their lives. We should grieve when cases grow cold because that means the perpetrators are still running free, living and enjoying life even though they've prevented someone else from living and enjoying life. We should also grieve when a murderer is caught and convicted and put to death, for if sin had never entered the world there would never be such things as murders and murderers. We have all sinned and fallen short (Romans 3:23) and therefore we have all helped to pollute the world with sin. We bear responsibility both as individuals and as the human race as a whole for the sad things that take place upon the earth.
But thanks be to God that there is a sacrifice of atonement! Thanks be to God that just as sin and death entered the world by man, grace and life entered the world by one man---Jesus Christ! (Romans 5:12-21) Through Him we have redemption. Through Him we can have our guilt and the judgment of God washed away from us just as the community in our passage today had guilt and judgment washed away from them by undertaking the ritual outlined in Deuteronomy 21. This ritual didn't literally absolve them of personal or societal guilt but it symbolically absolved them. Like all the sacrifices of the Old Testament, this ritual looked forward to the sacrifice that would be great enough to literally and forever absolve man of guilt in the eyes of a holy God. "It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins," (Hebrews 10:4), but these sacrifices symbolized the sacrifice that would be able to take away sins, about which it can be said: "We have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all." (Hebrews 10:10)
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