Deuteronomy 21:8

Be merciful to your people Israel, whom you have redeemed, O Lord, and do not charge them with innocent blood in the midst of your people Israel.’ And so the guilt of the blood will be taken away from them.

Catholic Public Domain Version

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

7And they shall say: ‘Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it.

9Then you will be free from the blood that was shed against the innocent, when you will have done as the Lord has instructed you.

Read all of Deuteronomy 21

Cross References

Numbers 35:33Do not pollute the land of your habitation, so as to stain it with the blood of the innocent; neither is it able to be expiated in any way other than by the blood of him who has shed the blood of another.

2 Kings 24:4and because of the innocent blood which he shed, and because he filled Jerusalem with the slaughter of the innocent. And for this reason, the Lord was not willing to be appeased.

Jeremiah 26:15Yet truly, know and understand this: if you kill me, you will be bringing innocent blood against yourselves, and against this city and its inhabitants. For in truth, the Lord sent me to you, so as to speak all these words in your hearing.”

Ezekiel 23:24And they will overwhelm you, well-equipped with chariot and wheel, a multitude of peoples. They will be armed against you on every side with armor and shield and helmet. And I will give judgment to their eyes, and they will judge you with their judgments.

Matthew 23:35so that upon you may fall all the blood of the just, which has been shed upon the earth, from the blood of Abel the just, even to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you killed 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 →

This Verse In Other Editions

Study Deuteronomy 21:8