Deuteronomy 21 · a question people ask
Was the heifer a sacrifice for the killing?
The chapter doesn't call it one. It names no altar and no offering, and says nothing of blood being sprinkled or anything being burned. The heifer's neck is broken in a valley "which is neither plowed nor sown" (21:4), the priests "come near" (21:5), and the elders wash their hands over it (21:6) and pray (21:7-8). The verb for what follows is the one Leviticus uses for atonement, kafar (Leviticus 17:11): "Forgive, LORD, your people Israel" and "The blood shall be forgiven them" (21:8). Readers take the heifer in two main ways. Both agree that the forgiving is the LORD's, since the elders ask him for it (21:8), and that the innocent blood must be put away (21:9).
How Christians read it
Where Christians differ, Favor sets out the main views side by side and doesn't pick one.
Blood where the killer's can't be found
Those who hold this view start from Numbers: "No atonement can be made for the land for the blood that is shed in it, but by the blood of him who shed it" (Numbers 35:33). Here the one who shed it isn't known (21:1). They read the heifer's death in the valley, followed by the same verb kafar (21:8), as standing where the killer's blood could not.
Numbers 35:33 · Deuteronomy 21:1 · Deuteronomy 21:4 · Deuteronomy 21:8
A rite of innocence and prayer
Those who hold this view note that nothing is offered on an altar, and that breaking the neck is what the law commands for a firstborn donkey that is not redeemed: "if you will not redeem it, then you shall break its neck" (Exodus 13:13), the same Hebrew verb, araf, as in 21:4. They read the rite as the elders' public word that their hands are clean (21:6-7), with forgiveness coming from the LORD in answer to their prayer (21:8).
Exodus 13:13 · Deuteronomy 21:4 · Deuteronomy 21:6-8
The verses
“For the life of the flesh is in the blood. I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement by reason of the life.”