Why a ritual for an unsolved murder (21:1-9)?
God had declared that “bloodshed pollutes the land” (Numbers 35:33-34). So something had to be done to cleanse the land of the guilt of murder. Unplowed land may have symbolized unproductive land. It pictured fields without crops as the consequences of the murder. Running water, then, would have symbolized cleansing. This ritual thus would mean that no plow could uncover any guilt or blood that had soaked into the ground.
