CLEAN, and so INNOCENT — the ordinary adjective for being clear of a charge rather than a word for moral purity. Its commonest home is the phrase dam naqi, innocent blood, which Deuteronomy 19:10 makes the whole purpose of the cities: so that innocent blood is not shed in the midst of your land. ⚠ Three verses later the chapter uses it the other way round. 19:13 orders Israel to burn out the blood of THE innocent from Israel — and the man being burned out is a murderer. The blood is the victim’s, and it is treated as a stain with a location, which is how dam naqi works everywhere: it is not the killer’s guilt but the dead man’s claim, sitting on the land until it is answered. ⭐ The same logic drives the phrase’s later career — Manasseh filling Jerusalem with it (2 Kings 21:16), Jeremiah warning the men trying him that killing him will put innocent blood on yourselves and on this city (Jeremiah 26:15). ⚠ Deuteronomy 21:1-9 is the whole premise built into a ritual: a body in a field, no suspect, and therefore nobody whose guilt could be the problem — and the law still requires the nearest town's elders to hold a ceremony and ask Jehovah to make atonement, because the dam naqi is on the ground whether or not anyone present put it there. The chapter's closing formula then says to BURN OUT the innocent blood, exactly as 19:13 does, which only makes sense if the thing being removed is a stain and not a person's guilt. ⭐ Deuteronomy 24:5 (now on these pages) uses it of a newly married man: he shall be naqi for his house one year — clear of the army and of any duty, the sense Genesis 24:8 gives a servant released from an oath and 1 Kings 15:22 (not yet on these pages) gives a levy from which no one is exempt, ein naqi. The Douay prints both senses of the Latin at once, 'free at home without fault'. ⭐ The last of the phrase’s Torah homes is a curse: cursed is he who takes a bribe to strike down a life — innocent blood (Deuteronomy 27:25, now on these pages), three nouns with no joint between them; Psalm 15:5 (not yet on these pages) makes the same refusal a condition of standing on the holy hill, nor takes a bribe against the innocent, al naqi. → first discussed at Deut 19:10