Deuteronomy 21:6

Summary

Deuteronomy 21:6 describes the elders of the town closest to an unidentified slain body performing a ritual hand-washing over a heifer whose neck has been broken in a wadi. The verse specifies who performs the act (the elders), their qualification (nearness to the corpse), and the location/object of the washing (the heifer, in the wadi).

Key words

• khol ("all", H3605) — masculine singular construct, opening a construct chain: "all of the elders of…", setting up the group performing the action.
• zikNei ("elders of", H2205G) — masculine plural construct, grammatically the noun that the following adjective qerovim actually modifies, not the city itself.
• hiv' ("that", H1931) — feminine singular pronoun, referring back to ha'Ir ("the city", H5892B), confirming the city's gender agreement.
• qeroVim ("near", H7138) — masculine plural adjective, agreeing grammatically with zikNei ("elders"), not with the feminine 'Ir ("city").
• yirchaTzu ("they will wash", H7364) — qal imperfect, third person masculine plural, expressing a future/ongoing prescribed action.
• 'aruFah ("broken-necked", H6202) — qal passive participle feminine singular, describing the heifer's state as already having been struck, not an action still to occur.

What the text says

The sentence begins with a construct chain: khol zikNei ha'Ir hahiv' — "all the elders of that city." The adjective qeroVim ("near") is masculine plural, which means it grammatically agrees with zikNei ("elders," masculine plural) rather than with ha'Ir ("the city," feminine singular). In the Hebrew construction, it is literally "the elders who are near to the slain one," not "the city that is near." Translations that render this as "the city nearest the victim" reflect the sense intended — determining which town's elders are responsible — but the Hebrew grammar attaches nearness to the elders as a group, not to the city as a place-name.

The verb yirchaTzu ("they will wash," H7364) is a qal imperfect, indicating a prescribed future or repeated action for whichever elders meet the criteria. The object marked by 'et is yedei-hem ("their hands," H3027G with H9028 suffix), a dual-form noun with pronominal suffix. The heifer is described with the participle 'aruFah ("broken-necked," H6202), a passive form showing the action was already done to it before the elders' washing takes place, and the location is fixed with ba-Nachal ("in the wadi," H5158N).

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the phrase with κεφαλὴν ("head") added — "over the head of the heifer" — a detail not present in the Hebrew, which reads simply "over the heifer" ('al-ha'egLah). The Vulgate's "ad interfectum" ("to the slain [man]") corresponds closely to the Hebrew 'el-hechaLal ("to the slain," H2491A). Modern translations (BSB, RV1909, SBLIBRE) shift "near" from the elders to the city ("the city nearest the victim"), differing from the strict Hebrew agreement pattern where qeroVim modifies zikNei.