Deuteronomy 21:8

Have mercy, O Lord, on your people Israel whom you have made free, and take away from your people the crime of a death without cause. Then they will no longer be responsible for the man's death.

Bible in Basic English

In The King James Version

Be merciful, O LORD, unto thy people Israel, whom thou hast redeemed, and lay not innocent blood unto thy people of Israel’s charge. And the blood shall be forgiven them.

In Context

7Will say, This death is not the work of our hands and our eyes have not seen it.

9So you will take away the crime of a death without cause from among you, when you do what is right in the eyes of the Lord.

Read all of Deuteronomy 21

Cross References

Numbers 35:33So do not make the land where you are living unholy: for blood makes the land unholy: and there is no way of making the land free from the blood which has come on it, but only by the death of him who was the cause of it.

2 Kings 24:4And because of the death of those who had done no wrong, for he made Jerusalem full of the blood of the upright; and the Lord had no forgiveness for it.

Jeremiah 26:15Only be certain that, if you put me to death, you will make yourselves and your town and its people responsible for the blood of one who has done no wrong: for truly, the Lord has sent me to you to say all these words in your ears.

Ezekiel 23:24And they will come against you from the north on horseback, with war-carriages and a great band of peoples; they will put themselves in order against you with breastplate and body-cover and metal head-dress round about you: and I will make them your judges, and they will give their decision against you as seems right to them.

Matthew 23:35So that on you may come all the blood of the upright on the earth, from the blood of upright Abel to the blood of Zachariah, son of Barachiah, whom you put to death between the Temple and the altar.

Matthew Henry on Deuteronomy 21:2-10

Undetected Murder. ( b. c. 1451.) 1 If one be found slain in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee to possess it, lying in the field, and it be not known who hath slain him: 2 Then thy elders and thy judges shall come forth, and they shall measure unto the cities which are round about him that is slain: 3 And it shall be, that the city which is next unto the slain man, even the elders of that city shall take a heifer, which hath not been wrought with, and which hath not drawn in the yoke; 4 And the elders of… Read the whole commentary →

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