Bar-Ilan University
Parashat Hashavua Study Center
Parashat Shoftim 5771/ September 3, 2011
Lectures on the weekly Torah reading by the faculty of Bar-Ilan University in Ramat
Gan, Israel. A project of the Faculty of Jewish Studies, Paul and Helene Shulman Basic
Jewish Studies Center, and the Office of the Campus Rabbi. Published on the Internet
under the sponsorship of Bar-Ilan University's International Center for Jewish Identity.
Prepared for Internet Publication by the Computer Center Staff at Bar-Ilan University.
Inquiries
and
comments
to:
Dr.
Isaac
Gottlieb,
Department
of
Bible,
Isaac.Gottlieb@biu.ac.il.
Menahem Ben-Yashar
Ashkelon College
On the Rite of Breaking a Heifer's Neck
The rationalist text, Guide for the Perplexed, views the complex and public ceremony of
breaking a heifer's neck (Deut. 21:1-9) as none other than a means of communication and
publicity: it guarantees that what happened will become the talk of the town, so that the
identity of the murderer in a case of "the identity of the slayer not being known" will be
discovered (Deut. 21:1).1 Even more extreme in his rationalist approach was R. Joseph ibn
Kaspi, whose commentary on the Torah, Mishneh Kesef, adds to Maimonides that the
ceremony was designed to awaken the public to the need to guard the roads well, and this
act, which is done for the masses, requires no explanation of the details of the rite;
apparently, its very strangeness sufficed to stir the public.
1
Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed, 3.40. But in Mishneh Torah (end of Sefer ha-Avodah,
Me`illah 8.8), Maimonides lists the heifer whose neck is broken along with the laws (hukkim)
whose rationale is unknown to us.
1
Not so R. Isaac Abarbanel, who in principle concurred with Guide for the Perplexed but, as
was typical for him, sought the symbolism in the details of the rite. One detail had already
been explicated by Maimonides: the place where the rite was held shall "not be tilled or
sown,"2 so that the owner of the land, who was eager to till his field, might endeavor to
discover the murderer before the ceremony took place (for example, by hiring a private
detective). The rest of the details of the commandment symbolize the act of slaying and the
murdered person: a heifer is brought, symbolizing a member of the Israelite community,
since Israel is referred to as a "trained heifer" (Hos. 10:11);3 deliberately a young one, to
symbolize the innocence of the murdered person;4 this trait is also symbolized by selecting a
place which is not tilled or sown near an everflowing wadi, assumed always to have water
in it, symbolic of the Torah which has been compared to water (Isa. 55:1). Breaking the
heifer's neck from behind symbolizes the act of murder, done surreptitiously. Moreover,
killing the heifer over the water (in the everflowing wadi) symbolizes the idea of Israel
deserving to have had their livestock die for lack of water. The same applies to Scripture
saying that the field by the wadi shall not be sown, for the agriculture of Israel ought not to
succeed on account of guilt for the blood of the innocent.
To a contemporary reader, the symbolism of these details appears far-fetched, and perhaps
even Don Isaac Abarbanel himself viewed it as no more than a nice homiletic touch. An
exegete with a kabbalistic bent such as Nahmanides feels no need to interpret the details of
the commandment, agreeing with the pragmatic benefit ascribed to it by Maimonides. He
adds however that the law of breaking a heifer's neck belongs to the category of "sacrifices
made outside," i.e., outside the Temple, like the red heifer and the scapegoat, and are laws
(hukkim) whose rationale is hidden from us. Perhaps he was hinting that only those who are
party to the secrets of the Torah would have an inkling of the significance of these laws.
Modern biblical scholars and exegetes have come close to understanding the rationale of
the commandment of breaking a heifer's neck. They see this commandment in the context
of the motif of innocent blood being spilt and thereby defiling and polluting the land, thus
preventing its fertility. Only after the sin is expiated and the land purified will it again
become fruitful. The precedent for this is in Cain killing his brother Abel, in the wake of
which it was decreed, "If you till the soil, it shall no longer yield its strength to you. You shall
become a ceaseless wanderer on earth" (Gen. 4:12).
When the land of Israel was chosen for the people who worship the Lord, the applicability of
this motif became restricted to this land. This motif provided the basis for the law of the city
of refuge: even a manslayer cannot continue living on his farm and tilling the soil, until the
2
Deut. 21:4, assuming that the wadi (nahal) where the heifer was beheaded was everflowing
and therefore had agricultural fields along its banks. See note 5.
3
According to some commentators, this verse is said pejoratively of Israel. Moreover, also
Moab is referred to as a heifer in Isaiah 15:5, and Jeremiah 46:20, and 48:34. Egypt is thus
called in Jeremiah 46:20, and Babylon, in Jeremiah 50:11.
4
Sotah 46a.
2
death of the High Priest, out of the hope and conjecture that by the end of his life the High
Priest would have managed to bring expiation for the inadvertent sins committed during his
lifetime (cf. Num. 35:28). There (Num. 35:33-34) it says of a person who commits
premeditated murder:
You shall not pollute the land in which you live; for blood pollutes the land, and the
land can have no expiation for blood that is shed on it, except by the blood of him
who shed it. You shall not defile the land in which you live, in which I Myself abide,
for I the Lord abide among the Israelite people.
According to this principle, how is it ever possible to obtain expiation for innocent blood
having been shed? How can one purify the land from guilt once there has been a murder
and the murderer has not been caught and remains unknown? The passage on the heifer
whose neck is broken answers this question: the curse caused by shedding innocent blood is
symbolically transferred from agricultural land, from the "open" field (21:1) on which the
murder took place, to a nahal eitan (21:4), i.e., a rocky area that cannot be cultivated, where
the curse will do no harm.5 This is analogous to the Day of Atonement, when the High Priest
sends off the sins of Israel on the head of a he-goat to an inaccessible region in the
wilderness, i.e., to a rocky region of gullies which cannot be cultivated (Lev. 16:10, 21-22).
In the specific case of an unsolved murder which is likely to endanger the fertility of the
fields of the residents of the city nearest to the scene of the crime, the Torah settles for
transferring the uncleanness and the curse to a nearby rocky riverbed, for during the
Israelite settlement of the land of Israel, which clustered in the highlands, such a wadi could
be found near every settlement. In the opinion of Shadal, there is another reason for killing
the heifer on rocks, as said in Ezekiel (24:7-8) of the "city of blood," i.e., Jerusalem: "For the
blood she shed is still in her; she set it upon a bare rock; she did not pour it out on the
ground to cover it with earth. She set her blood upon the bare rock, so that it was not
covered." Exposed blood on the bare rock, not absorbed into the earth, cries out for
revenge until it is expiated.6 Ezekiel's vision was of Jerusalem with no temple, a city where
there was no expiation. In the case of the heifer whose neck is broken, there is expiation,
albeit not in the Temple but by the priests who entreat, "Absolve, O Lord, Your people Israel
whom You redeemed, and do not let guilt for the blood of the innocent remain among Your
people Israel" (Deut. 21:8), as if to say: If You could redeem us from the mighty land of
Egypt, please redeem us from this spilling of blood.
5
That Hebrew eitan means "rocky" is the interpretation of S.D.Luzzato (Shadal) and others,
based on Num. 24:21, where the Hebrew word eitan is parallel to sela (=rock). It is also how
the word was understood by the Sages (Sotah 46a-b) and all the ancient Aramaic translations.
However, the NJPS renders nahal eitan as "everflowing wadi." This interpretation was
introduced by Maimonides in Mishne Torah (Hilkhot Rotze'ah 9.2), relying on Amos 5:24: "But
let justice well up like water, righteousness like an unfailing stream (nahal eitan)."
6
Also cf. Job 16:18.
3
Some commentators view breaking the heifer's neck in a wadi as reconstructing the
mysterious act of murder, so that expiation can be made later on.7 There are differences of
opinion as to whether the heifer symbolizes the murder victim, his blood crying out from the
rock until it be appeased and atoned.8 This is the prevalent view among the Sages. However
there is also a saying in the legends of the Sages: "There, in the wadi, they shall break the
hiefer's neck – A man commits murder and the neck of a heifer gets broken! If a man has
sinned, how has the animal sinned!"9 According to this view, also present in modern
interpretations, that which ought to have been done to the murderer is done to the heifer.
Both symbolic substitutions present difficulties: if the heifer stands for the murderer, how
can a young innocent heifer represent a cruel, violent murderer? And if it represents the
murder victim, choosing an animal similar to the victim would have been more appropriate
– a young female animal for a young female victim, an old animal for an old man. Moreover,
why should there be any substitute for the murder victim? Since the corpse is available, it
could be brought to the place where the rite is held. The argument that the corpse should
not be moved a long distance for reasons of hygiene and aesthetics, or because of the
respect and burial due to the dead, can be countered by pointing to a similar instance of
expiation for spilling innocent blood: Rizpah, daughter of Aiah, kept seven corpses out on a
bare rock for several days at least, during the summer barley harvest season.10 Also the
verse from Ezekiel 24, cited above, points to the bodies of murdered persons being left
(symbolically) on a bare rock.
Cattle were the main work force of our ancestors in ancient Israel. They were used to
extract the fruit of the soil11 and symbolized this power. A young heifer, "which has never
been worked, which has never pulled in a yoke," symbolized the full work potential not yet
utilized. Thus the neck of this animal, the potential for work and agricultural productivity,
was broken into a rocky wadi as if to say that the curse of making the land no longer fertile,
which should have fallen on the field in which the murder took place and perhaps also on
neighboring fields, was being transferred to the desolate wadi across from it. There the
death of the heifer would symbolize the loss of fertility, while the other fields would be
freed from the curse resulting from innocent blood having been shed.
7
See S. E. Loewenstamm, under eglah arufah, Encyclopedia Mikrait, (1972), pp. 77-79; A. Rofe,
"Eglah Arufah," Tarbiz 31 (1962), pp. 119-143.
8
See note 4, above.
9
Eccles. Rabbah 7.16; Midrash Shmuel 18.2.
10
II Sam. 21:9-10. They were not left there until the autumn rains, but until "rain from the sky
fell on the bodies" (cf. Ex. 9:33), i.e., until a sudden cloud-burst destroyed the small amount of
harvest from the drought year. This teaches that impaling seven of Saul's male issue was not
the expiation the Lord desired for killing the Gibeonites.
11
Cf. Prov. 14:4: "a rich harvest comes through the strength of the ox." In our case a female
animal (eglah) is used, not a male one, because she gives milk and bears offspring.
4
For the priests' request for expiation to be sincere and honest, first the elders of the nearest
city had to declare, "Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it done" (Deut.
21:7). The Sages (B. Sotah 46b; JT. Sotah 9.6, 23d) interpreted this as meaning that the
elders were innocent of indirect complicity in the murder insofar as they cared for
wayfarers, seeing to their food and safety, and maintained and guarded the roads. This is
right and proper, and is an important lesson for our day. It seems, however, that by the
plain sense of the text their declaration was made in the name of all the residents of the
nearby town: the murderer was not one of us, nor are there any witnesses among us who
could bring the murderer to justice.
This could be an honest declaration, since in the biblical period most of the cities in the land
of Israel, save for the coastal plain which was settled by non-Jews, were small agricultural
settlements with a population of about one thousand people, generally belonging only to
two or three clans. Everyone knew everyone else, the elders of the city kept an open eye on
the goings on among all the residents, and it was difficult to conceal anything from them.
Aside from this, there was a feeling of mutual responsibility and fear lest the sin of one of
them bring disaster upon the entire city and all its inhabitants. This declaration by the
elders, if indeed it reflected the truth, along with the priests' entreaty for expiation could
remove the curse of desolation from the city and its outlying agricultural fields.
The concluding words, "Thus you will remove [or, You shall remove] from your midst guilt
for the blood of the innocent, for you will be doing [or, if you do] what is right in the sight of
the Lord" (Deut. 21:0), is interpreted as reflecting the obligation to judge the murderer and
put him to death, even if he be found after the rite of breaking a heifer's neck. This would
be correct both logically and halakhically,12 as follows from the verse itself; yet it seems that
the main thrust is to say: if all of Israel would do what is right in the eyes of the Lord, such
instances of murder would not occur, and there would be no need for an expiation rite.
Better to prevent than to expiate.
For our time this passage teaches us how serious a crime it is to shed innocent blood,
especially in the land of Israel, where innocent blood causes societal and physical damage.
Also note that among the reasons for this rite Shadal mentions that doing away with the
blood guilt is necessary so the residents of the area, in their fear of the land becoming
defiled and ruined, will not rush to blame the murder on an innocent person, quickly framing
someone for the murder, as if in doing so they would rid themselves of the curse.
12
Sifre Deuteronomy, and parallel texts. Rashi, Sforno, Shadal and others share this view.
5