Murder Desecrates the Land

Murder Desecrates the Land
Deuteronomy 21: 1-23

Last night I watched the second episode of an enchanting TV series called The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. At one level it’s just another detective series of the “Miss Marple” genre, but it has a winsomeness deriving from its setting in Botswana. The community’s life straddles traditional and modern society, and the former of these elements stands closer to the Old Testament than Western life does; an incident in the first episode involves a meeting of the village elders to decide a dispute over a missing goat. The scene compares with the kind of procedure the Torah prescribes. Last night’s episode involved a missing person. The lady detective proved he had been eaten by a crocodile. His wife was not as saddened as one might have expected, but he was a womanizer (she said)...