Глава 21

Laws: about the corpse of a murdered person when the killer is unknown; about marriage with a captive; about the right of primogeniture of children from two wives; about punishing disobedient children; about someone executed by hanging. Deut.21:1. If in the land which the Lord your God is giving you to possess, a murdered man is found lying in the field, and it is not known who killed him, Deut.21:2. then let your elders and your judges go out and measure the distance to the cities that are around the slain man; Deut.21:3. and the elders of the city which is nearest to the one killed, let them take a heifer on which they have not worked, [and] which has not carried a yoke, Deut.21:4. and let the elders of that city take the heifer into a wild valley, which is neither developed nor sown, and there kill the heifer in the valley; Deut.21:5. and the priests, the sons of Levi, will come [for the Lord your God has chosen them to serve Him and to bless in the name of the Lord, and by their word every disputed matter and every harm done should be decided,] Deut.21:6. and all the elders of that city who are nearest to the slain man shall wash their hands over the heifer that was slain in the valley, Deut.21:7. and they will declare and say: Our hands have not shed this blood, neither have our eyes seen; Deut.21:8. cleanse Your people Israel, which You, O Lord, liberated [from the land of Egypt], and do not impute innocent blood to Your people Israel. And they will be cleansed of blood. Deut.21:9. So you must wash away the blood of the innocent if you want to do [good and] just in the sight of the Lord [your God]. The law of retribution and crime prevention required the death penalty for a deliberate murderer (Gen. 4:10, 11, 9:6, 49:5–7; Ex. 21:14, Num. 35:30–34). In cases where the killer was unknown, an emblematic execution of the perpetrator and a ritual of hand washing were performed - as a sign of innocence of the crime and cleansing of the blood of a person shed by someone unknown. Deut.21:10. When you go out to war against your enemies, and the Lord your God delivers them into your hand and takes them captive, Deut.21:11. and you will see a beautiful-looking woman among the captives, and you will love her, and you will want to take her as your wife, Deut.21:12. then bring her into your house, and let her shave her head and trim her nails, Deut.21:13. and he will take off his captive clothing, and live in your house, and mourn for his father and his mother for a month; and after that you can go in to her and become her husband, and she will be your wife; The legislator “does not want crying to be mixed with fun, or tears to be mixed with a smile. Therefore, he orders that the captive be given time to cry, and then, when she is freed from tears, she enters into marital intercourse. Moreover, he also curbs the lust of the captor, commanding him to be guided in communication not by voluptuousness, but by reason” (Blessed Theodore, Commentary on Book Deuteronomy, issue 19). “For,” explains St. Ephraim the Syrian, - if he really wants to have her (the captive) as a wife, then he will abstain for the entire time prescribed by law” (Interpretation of the book Deuteronomy, Chapter XXI). Deut.21:17. but as the firstborn, he must recognize the son as unloved [and] give him a double share of everything that he has, for he is the firstfruits of his strength, the right of birthright belongs to him. The firstborn received a double share of the inheritance, and upon the death of his father, he became the eldest in the family. Before the centralization of Jewish worship at the tabernacle and the allocation of the tribe of Levi to the service of Jehovah, the firstborn had, in addition, the right to perform patriarchal worship in his own way Deut.21:18. If anyone has a son who is violent and disobedient, who does not obey the voice of his father and the voice of his mother, and they punish him, but he does not listen to them, Deut.21:19. then let his father and his mother take him and bring him to the elders of his city and to the gate of his residence Deut.21:20. and they will say to the elders of their city: “This son of ours is violent and rebellious, he does not listen to our words, he is a spendthrift and a drunkard”; Deut.21:21. then let all the inhabitants of his city stone him to death; and so destroy evil from among you, and all Israel will hear and fear. Wed Ref. 20:12, 21:15, Lev. 20:9. The family is one of the atoms from the totality of which the organism of the state is composed. Their inviolability in the second largely depends on the strength of normal relationships in the first. In a theocratic state, such as the state of the Jews, the prosperity of the state is also the prosperity of the Church. This explains the severity that the law shows in relation to persons who violate the fifth commandment. In contrast to the custom and law of other peoples of the ancient world (for example, the Romans), who left it to the father to execute his own children, the law of the Jews makes the decision and execution of the death sentence in the cases noted in the commented verses, as well as in others, dependent on a properly organized court. Deut.21:22. If anyone has a crime worthy of death, and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, Deut.21:23. then his body should not spend the night on a tree, but bury him that same day, for cursed before God is [everyone] who is hanged [on a tree], and do not defile your land, which the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance. “Cursed before God is everyone who is hanged on a tree,” for the crime he committed. You might be interested in: