Devarim Chapter 21 – Transcript

Devarim Chapter 21: Egla Arufa and Yefas Toar — Society’s Responsibility for Murder and the Laws of the Captive Woman

The Structure and Organization of Chapter 21

Deuteronomy chapter 21. In the previous chapter we had laws of war. This chapter skips around. Whoever organized the chapters disagreed a little bit with whoever organized the *parshahs* of the week because he put the second *parshah*, the second time it says Ki Seitzei Lamilchama [when you will go out to war], he puts it in this chapter 21 along with the previous chapters and along with some things later that also have to do with maybe you have connected with that or maybe not.

Whoever divided the chapters thought that this first mitzvah, the first *parshah* in this chapter, which is the *halacha* of *Egla Arufa* [the beheaded calf], he put in the end of *Parshas Shoftim*. But then Ki Seitzei Lamilchama, he started a new series, which is the second Ki Seitzei Lamilchama, which is the laws of *Yefas Toar* [the beautiful captive woman]. We could call that the series of family laws.

But on the other hand, of course, this *halacha* of *Egla Arufa* is sandwiched between two Ki Seitzei Lamilchamas, two laws of war. So, of course, we can understand that the previous laws of war were the general rules, the rules for everyone, for the *Kohen*, when to create a siege, when to do a *cherem* [total destruction] and so on, when to accept peace offerings and so on. While the second Ki Seitzei Lamilchama is about one individual who takes a captive, takes a woman from the war and how we should react with that. Of course, that’s also going to be enforced, I assume, by the *Kohen*, by the same people who are in charge, but we can understand the difference.

A Broader Framework: Regulating Death and Murder in Society

But another way, which will more justify whoever divided the chapters, is to understand that this is all in the context, as we’ve said, this is all about entering the land, creating a state, creating a society which works. Now a society, of course war is one of the basic things that societies do, but war can also be seen as only one instance of the society organizing, regulating the subject of death, murder, justified killing, unjustified killing, accidental killing, as we’ve seen in a chapter before that we had the laws of manslaughter, what happens if someone accidentally kills someone, all of that.

We can see the entirety of laws of war as being, in some sense, a regulation of that. We don’t just go to war for no reason, we don’t go to war with no order, there’s regulation of war. And in that same vein we can see this story, this *halacha*, is a continuation of that.

Egla Arufa: When the Murderer Is Unknown

Beyond Punishing Known Murderers

So the story is just like we saw, that it’s not enough to punish explicit murders, deliberate murders, that we know who the murderer is and then we do what we need to do for that. It’s not enough to punish or to regulate the punishment of accidental murder, it’s not enough to punish explicit murders when it’s entirely an accident or something in between, but we need to do something even more than that.

There are some times when we don’t even know who the murderer is, and this is of course something very important, because a city, a society, is not only about catching murderers that we know of or that we know who they were, but they were an accident and regulating that, the society is also about preventing murders in the first place. You need to have security, you need to have safety, you need to have deterrence, you need people to know that murders are not something that is accepted.

Blood on the Land: The Need for Atonement

And that’s where we have the language, not clearly over here, but the language in the earlier books, which is the land, that blood spilled on the land, blood spilled on the earth, like we saw about Cain [Kayin] in Heaven [Hevel] and *Parshas Bereishis*, is a kind of blemish, a kind of defilement of the land itself, and the land needs some kind of cleaning, a *kapara* [atonement], and as it says over there, the only way to atone for this, *kapara* probably means something more like clean, or purify the land from the blood guilt, from the blood that was spilled unjustly, is by spilling the blood of the one who murdered.

But now sometimes we don’t have that person, so we need some way, and of course the communion is taught somewhat like mystically, and the order of things, there’s something wrong with there being a dead person, a body laying here with like no justice, nothing happens with it, but even more than that, this can also be understood, I don’t know, it can also be understood socially, as something that we have to show very clearly that we take this seriously, this is not something that we, oh, if someone murders someone and manages to get away, then we’re okay with it, right, or something like, we don’t really worry to begin with about the security of the people that thinks like that shouldn’t happen.

The Ritual of Egla Arufa: The Procedure

So there’s this whole ritual here, which is said at the case where a dead person, a dead body is found, very clearly, in the earth, on the earth, laying on the earth, this Adam [land] that Hashem will give you to inherit, the one at Israel, he’s falling in the field, it’s fell, we don’t know who killed him, we don’t know, it’s unknown, it’s just a body is found, and there’s like a murder mystery to solve. So what do we do?

Measuring to the Nearest City

We have this law called, we call it *Egla Arufa*, the elders, the judges of that town, firstly, the elders and the judges of everyone need to find which city is the closest, so this is ba-sadeh [in the field], this is in the field, it’s not in a city, so another, like, even we can broaden our definition of how important, how broad the obligation of society to cover, to protect from murders is, okay, in a city, of course, you’re protected, you have walls, you have people watching in some sense, what about in between cities, what about in like this kind of, in the field, in no man’s land, it’s not, it’s not even a city, so what about that? Who is responsible for this?

So for that, we have this, like, first part of this law, which is the elders of the people in entirety, I imagine, will have to go and measure which town is the closest. Now, what’s the point of measuring which town is the closest? It means to say is, when you’re a town, you’re also responsible for the fields around you, and whoever is the closest will have to take responsibility on this, that’s your job.

The Calf That Has Never Worked

So they measure, they find which one is the closest, and the one that we find is the closest, they have to take a Eglas Bakar [calf of a cow], and one that was not worked with, that has never pulled a yoke, and this means something like, maybe it’s a symbolic thing, something like, the *para aduma* [red heifer] had a similar law, right, take one that was never worked, like, if you worked and you already make use, you already domesticated this animal, so to speak, you need like an undomesticated animal, like something, and part of this will be like a cost, like we’re never going to make any use out of this.

The Nachal: An Unworked Place

And we take it also to a place, this person was killed in a field, a field has usually agricultural use, takes them to a nachal [wadi], like some kind of, sometimes said, maybe like a wadi, a dry place, a deep dry place, where there’s sometimes, how do you call it, sometimes there’s water there, sometimes there isn’t, but a place, again, which has not been worked, not been planted, nothing is planted over there, it’s not, it’s a dead place, there’s something like, in some sense, we’re going to lose this place, we’re going to sort of dedicate this place to this dead person.

Arifa: Beheading the Calf

And they kill, they cut off the head with an axe or something, of the Egla ba-nachal [calf in the wadi], similar to what we have, right, this is a way of like destroying a living thing, we have the same, something like, this is like, what we do, we want to entirely cut ourselves off from enjoying, from taking from something, from an animal.

The Role of the Kohanim

And then the Kohanim [priests], the Levi’im [Levites], who Hashem chose to serve him, to bless him in his name, to judge every fight, every nega, nega might mean nega, like nega tzara’as [affliction of tzara’as], but nega tzara’as is not mentioned in the whole book of Deuteronomy, but it might mean also nega in the sense of like someone hitting someone else or causing some damage, and they will have to come.

Washing Hands and the Declaration

And all the elders of the city, and they wash their hands over this calf that they have beheaded, and this washing hands is obviously something symbolic, I don’t think it can be understood as like not washing anything, but it’s like, as if it’s a symbol of the washing of the blood, right, and what they’re saying, there’s a saying that they say, the Onu ve-amru [they shall speak up and say], they say, this is like the, like probably the text that they have to say, Yadeinu lo shafchu es ha-dam ha-zeh ve-eineinu lo ra’u [our hands have not spilled this blood, our eyes have not seen].

And they ask Hashem, forgive, it’s like the Kohanim say, right, forgive your people Israel, Asher Padita [whom you redeemed], that probably goes back to *Mitzrayim* [Egypt], the ones that you’ve redeemed, and do not allow innocent blood, in other words, the guilt of innocent blood, in between people, and then if they do this, ve-nikhpar lahem ha-dam [the blood will be forgiven for them], the dam [blood] will be forgiven for them, will be atoned.

The Meaning: Security and Responsibility

And what this means is something like, our hands are not dirty with his blood, right, they’re washing their hands, it’s something like our hands are not dirty, which means, as Chazal say, in a very broad sense, we didn’t refuse him security, right, we didn’t not walk him, not give him accompaniment for the way to watch him, in other words, when there’s, the part of the job of the Kohanim, of these people, is to make sure that there’s security and safety all around them.

And by saying this, and it’s weird, because obviously, they did, they are in some sense guilty, otherwise they wouldn’t be doing this, so, but of course, they’re, this is showing that they’re trying their best, and from now on, they will try to do what they could, and maybe in some way, this will also solve the problem, we could think of different ways in which this might solve it.

And therefore, and the Torah finishes that you will clean off the innocent blood from your, from between you, from your midst, and you will do the right thing in the eyes of Hashem, this is the right thing.

Yefas Toar: The Beautiful Captive Woman

Okay, so that’s the law of *Egla Arufa*, now we have, as we said, going back to the war, and when we go in the war, as we said, the way, what happens when you win, besides for the *Sheva Amim* [seven nations], what we have is, we capture their captives, now what happens in a war is, you see, one of the captives is a beautiful woman, and you want her, you like her, you want to take her for yourself, for a wife, and it says, for a wife, it’s a very explicit term, which doesn’t mean something like a concubine, we have a word for that, or something else, it means you’re going to take her for your wife, and this is the law regulating that even when you take a woman for a captive of war, you should still take her as your wife, and the basic law here is, and all the details, I think, all go into this.

The Law of the Beautiful Captive Woman (Eshet Yefat Toar)

And this is the details of that law. You bring her to your house, you cut off her, you allow her to cut off her hair, I think that’s probably what it means, and she makes her nails, probably means she polishes them. You allow her to dress, to groom herself normally, correctly, to remove her dress, which she was captured in, probably it’s dirty, it wasn’t a war, it’s a war zone, a battle.

And you also have to allow her 30 days to cry for her father and her mother, her parents were probably killed, or maybe also taken captive in the war, her mother, I don’t know. So we have to give her time to mourn, this is probably the most sensitivity that’s given here. You give her time to mourn her parents, and after all of that, you take her for yourself as a wife. That’s the point. Don’t just take her, you don’t just grab her, but you give her time to settle, you give her time to allow her to groom herself, you give her time to prepare herself, and all of that.

The Protection Against Selling Her

And now there’s one more law. If you do not want her, and this is also important, this is also something that, again, like I said, belongs to this concept that you have to take her as a wife. If you don’t want her, so don’t treat her as property. If it’s just property, then you don’t want her, or you tried her out, and you don’t want her, then you just sell her to the next person. Here it says, no, if you do not want her, you need to set her free, do not sell her for money, because tachas asher inisa [because you have hurt her], it might mean because you have taken her forcibly in the war, so it’s assuming that there was v’chashakta bah [and you desired her] doesn’t just mean you wanted, you also did something already at the first time, the heat of battle, but afterwards you can’t take a wife and hire her as a captive, even the wife that you’ve captured in the war.

So this is probably a great advancement over anything else that was ever done. You have to treat her as a wife, and if you don’t agree to that, if you end up not liking her or something like that, you don’t even have the right to sell her as a slave or something for the next person. There is the same law in the Umm al-Evriya [Hebrew slave girl], right, in the Parashat Mishpatim, we have the same law for someone who takes a Jewish girl as a slave girl and decides not to take her, that he can’t sell her to the next person, now we understand, here we’re talking about the one who was lost in the war, right, she’s totally not a Jewish girl, and even for them she has the same exact law.

Laws of Family Life

Okay, now we have two more laws, I put them all together, they all start with ish [a man], right, so we can see mostly as laws for individuals or for family life.

The Rights of the Firstborn Son

Now we have a law that’s very specifically about family life, and the law is, if a man has two wives, he likes one of them and doesn’t like the other one, called senuah [hated], might be relative, might be absolute, he hates her, and they have children, and then, unfortunately for him, the firstborn son is from the wife that he does not like, the law is, he cannot, because of that, give the bechorah [birthright], like unlike what Yitzchak Avinu did, he cannot give the right of the firstborn, which as it says here, is double, to get double of everyone else, cannot give it to the one, the child of the woman that he likes, he has to give it to the one who he hates, because he is his firstborn, to him belongs, the law of the bechorah, okay, that’s one law, very simple law, very reasonable.

The Rebellious Son (Ben Sorer Umorer)

Then there’s the law of the ben sorer umorer [rebellious son], if you have a child that does not listen to his parents, and they try to give him, so they try to educate him, but he does not listen to them, so they take him to the elders of his town, and they tell them, there’s this interesting, again, many laws here have this telling, this language, what they know, what he says, say our son is a zolel umoreh [glutton and rebellious], and does not listen to us, he is a zolel vesove [glutton and drunkard], he drinks and eats too much, and they will stone him with rocks, and he will die, and this also is a way of destroying the evil from within your midst.

Of course, this is a more problematic law, which parents would want to do that, okay, that’s another, I can’t have patience to get into this right now. And then the third law, because also this law seems to be like the opposite of limiting, all the laws until now were limiting people’s power and ability, suddenly there’s a law that seems to be the opposite, so probably we should assume that what this law is really doing is also in the context of something that was even worse, and it’s saying, do it only in this way.

Maybe it’s telling them they have to go to the, they can’t, like in Rome, officially appeared, a father could just kill his children if he doesn’t like them, here they have to go to the elders of the town, and the elders might be trying to talk them out of it, or try to find a way to not have this happen, and they have to involve the whole town, in other words, everyone has to agree that this child is that bad, if it’s just in a fight with his parents, it’s not enough, things like that, probably should be seen in that light.

The Law of the Hanged Criminal

Now we have one more law that’s also a very explicitly limiting punishment, limiting the punishment and humiliation of someone who deserves the death penalty. If someone deserves the death penalty, and you hung him, or I don’t know if talisa [hanging] means literally, we call hanging, might mean something like crucifixion, or something like impaling him, not clear, we assume that hanging means, what we identify as hanging, the way it’s done, or was done until recently in the West, but it’s not necessarily what talisa means, in any case, he was put on a tree, or on a wood.

There’s an important law which says do not let his corpse, his body, lay overnight on the tree, you should bury him in that day, here we know, you should bury someone that didn’t die in the death penalty. Why do you kill a slave, because they, kill means something like the curse, or the disrespect of God is hanging, in some sense, leaving a human being on a tree overnight would be a disrespect to God, there’s many interpretations of what this might mean, and also this will defile the land.

The Deeper Meaning: Preserving Human Dignity

So just like the land is defiled when an innocent person is killed on it, and we need to punish his murder and so on, it’s even defiled if you leave overnight a person who does deserve to die, this person who deserves the death penalty, still there’s something wrong with making death too easy, it’s like you go around at night and you see dead people hanging from trees, that’s a society in which they don’t take life seriously, they don’t take death, human death seriously.

So even though this is talking about a person who deserves to die, still there’s a limit to how much humiliation you can give him or how, I think it’s not just humiliation, it’s like this disrespect, like ah, it becomes cheap, so we need to make sure that it doesn’t become cheap, and therefore we need to make sure that to leave him, you could do this hanging, or whatever exactly talui [hanging] means, but he has to be buried that same day, so it doesn’t last, this humiliation gets taken down and buried, and that leaves the land pure.