1. If someone is found slain in the land which the Lord your God gives you to possess, lying in the field, and it isn’t known who has struck him;
2. then your elders and your judges shall come out, and they shall measure to the cities which are around him who is slain.
3. It shall be that the elders of the city which is nearest to the slain man shall take a heifer of the herd, which hasn’t been worked with, and which has not drawn in the yoke.
4. The elders of that city shall bring the heifer down to a valley with running water, which is neither ploughed nor sown, and shall break the heifer’s neck there in the valley.
5. The priests the sons of Levi shall come near; for them the Lord your God has chosen to minister to him, and to bless in the Lord’s name; and according to their word shall every controversy and every assault be decided.
6. All the elders of that city, who are nearest to the slain man, shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the valley.