To say that modern Americans have become desensitized to violence is a bit of an understatement. From the headlines in our newsfeeds to our movies and videogames, murder has become commonplace. We shake our heads with regret, but we are no longer shocked.

Today’s passage should provide a helpful corrective. For instead of shrugging off the latest outrage, or instead of pleading that the death of an innocent person took place outside their jurisdiction, the elders of the closest municipality were called to engage in a solemn ceremony attesting to their innocence.

The heifer, a cow that had never borne a calf or been yoked to a cart or plow, clearly symbolizes the innocent victim of murder. By killing this animal and then washing their hands with water over her body, the elders thus ritually underscored the truth of their testimony: “We didn’t take any part in this murder, and we don’t know anything about it.”

Now of course Christians aren’t called to engage in such bloody ceremonies, living as we do in the shadow of the Cross. But I can’t help but wonder what steps our leaders might take to minimize crime and violence in our streets if they were expected to make such formal attestations of their innocence whenever an innocent person is killed. Perhaps the first step to reducing our murder rates is to take the crime itself more seriously.

Deuteronomy 21:1-9 (NASB)

“If a slain person is found lying in the open country in the land which the LORD your God gives you to possess, and it is not known who has struck him,
2 then your elders and your judges shall go out and measure the distance to the cities which are around the slain one.
3 “And it shall be that the city which is nearest to the slain man, that is, the elders of that city, shall take a heifer of the herd, which has not been worked and which has not pulled in a yoke;
4 and the elders of that city shall bring the heifer down to a valley with running water, which has not been plowed or sown, and shall break the heifer’s neck there in the valley.
5 “Then the priests, the sons of Levi, shall come near, for the LORD your God has chosen them to serve Him and to bless in the name of the LORD; and every dispute and every assault shall be settled by them.
6 “And all the elders of that city which is 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, nor did our eyes see it.
8 ‘Forgive Thy people Israel whom Thou hast redeemed, O LORD, and do not place the guilt of innocent blood in the midst of Thy people Israel.’ And the bloodguiltiness shall be forgiven them.
9 “So you shall remove the guilt of innocent blood from your midst, when you do what is right in the eyes of the LORD.