Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Abbreviations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- CHAPTER ONE A First Case: The Story of Cain and Abel
- CHAPTER TWO Blood Feud and State Control
- CHAPTER THREE The Development of Places of Refuge in the Bible
- CHAPTER FOUR Pollution and Homicide
- CHAPTER FIVE Typologies of Homicide
- CHAPTER SIX Lex Talionis
- CHAPTER SEVEN Interterritorial Law: The Homicide of a Foreign Citizen
- Conclusion
- Appendix: Cuneiform Sources on Homicide
- Bibliography
- General Index
- Index of Citations
CHAPTER FOUR - Pollution and Homicide
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 November 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Abbreviations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- CHAPTER ONE A First Case: The Story of Cain and Abel
- CHAPTER TWO Blood Feud and State Control
- CHAPTER THREE The Development of Places of Refuge in the Bible
- CHAPTER FOUR Pollution and Homicide
- CHAPTER FIVE Typologies of Homicide
- CHAPTER SIX Lex Talionis
- CHAPTER SEVEN Interterritorial Law: The Homicide of a Foreign Citizen
- Conclusion
- Appendix: Cuneiform Sources on Homicide
- Bibliography
- General Index
- Index of Citations
Summary
FOR THE ancient Israelites, the spilling of blood in a homicide was an event of profound consequence because of the blood itself, not simply because of the physical harm of the assault. The blood that was spilled polluted. One of the statutes on homicide concludes with an explicit statement of the motivation for the statute: The blood of the victim pollutes the land (Num 35:33, 34):
You shall not pollute the land in which you are in, for the blood itself pollutes the land: expiation cannot be made on behalf of the land for the blood that was shed in it except by the blood of him who shed it. You shall not defile the land in which you are inhabiting, in which I dwell, for I the Lord dwell among the Israelites.
Warnings about purging evil from the midst of the Israelites appear with frequency in Deuteronomy (Deut 13:6; 17:7, 12; 21:21; 22:21, 22, 24; 24:7), but only with regard to the case of homicide does the warning specify that it is the blood of the innocent victim that must be removed. Deut 19:10–13, another of the statutes on homicide, warns the Israelites not to have pity upon the murderer so that the innocent blood of the victim can be purged:
The blood of the innocent shall not be shed in the land which the Lord your God is giving to you, imputing bloodguilt upon you. If a person is hostile to another and lies in wait and strikes him mortally so that he dies, and flees to one of these towns, the elders of his town shall send and take him back from there and deliver him to the blood avenger so that he dies.[…]
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- Homicide in the Biblical World , pp. 94 - 115Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004