your elders and judges must come out and measure the distance from the victim to the neighboring cities.
Care had been taken by some preceding laws for the vigorous and effectual persecution of a wilful murderer (Deu 19:11 etc.), the putting of whom to death was the putting away of the guilt of blood from the land; but if this could not be done, the murderer not being discovered, they must not think that the land was in no danger of contracting any...
Commenting on Deuteronomy 21:1-9
Then thy elders and thy judges shall come forth,.... From the city or cities near to which the murder was committed, to make inquiry about it, and expiation for it; so Aben Ezra interprets it of the elders of the cities near, but others understand it of the elders of the great sanhedrim at Jerusalem; so the Targum of Jonathan,"then shall go out from the...
Deu 21:1-2 Expiation of a Murder Committed by an Unknown Hand. - Deu 21:1 and Deu 21:2. If any one was found lying in a field in the land of Israel (נפל fallen, then lying, Jdg 3:25; Jdg 4:22), having been put to death without its being known who had killed him (וגו נודע לא, a circumstantial clause, attached without a copula, see Ewald, §341, b.
Commenting on Deuteronomy 21:1-2