Sotah 100

1:
Once the calf has been decapitated the elders can complete the ceremony. The Torah [Deuteronomy 21:7] requires the elders to wash the blood of the calf that is on their hands symbolically in the stream, letting the fast-flowing waters carry away, as it were, the blood-guilt. It is this declaration of the elders that must be recited in Hebrew only. This is learned, in common with all the other ritual statements that we have found in chapters 7, 8 and 9 – the recitation of First fruits, the Ĥalitzah statement of the woman, the blessings and curses at Mount Ebal, the priestly blessing, the blessings of the High Priest on the Day of Atonement, the Reading of the King, and the declaration of the Designated Priest. All of these must be recited in Hebrew, as we learned in the second mishnah of chapter seven.

2:
The basis of this rule is a phrase concerning 'speaking up and saying'. In our present case the Torah [Deuteronomy 21:7] says that the elders "shall speak up and say" their exculpatory declaration; when presenting his first fruits the Torah [Deuteronomy 26:5] says that the Israelite farmer must "speak up and say" his historical declaration; the Torah [Deuteronomy 25:9] says that the woman performing ĥalitzah must "speak up and say" her denigration of her brother-in-law. And so with the others. All are derived from the one case of the Blessings and the Curses as Mount Ebal. The Torah [Deuteronomy 27:14] says that the levitical priests must "speak up and say" the curses and the blessings, and this must no doubt have been in the Hebrew language, the language in which the Torah was given. It follows, say the sages, that all cases where someone is commanded to "speak up and say" must likewise refer to the holy tongue.

3:
It seems reasonable to assume that the text of our mishnah has been influenced by the text of a Baraita which is quoted in the Gemara [Sotah 46b] which seeks to explain why the elders are required to exculpate themselves. What they are interpreted as meaning is that as far as they know 'the deceased did not visit our town, but if he did we did not send him on his way without offering him food and an escort'. In all probability the original text of our mishnah was:

4:
The Torah [Deuteronomy 21:5] mentions the levitical priests: The Levitical priests shall come forward (for it is them that God has chosen to minister to him and to bless in God's name, and according to their word shall every controversy and every stroke be). But the Torah does not give them any role in the ceremony. Our mishnah gives them a role: they are to recite part of what the Torah seems to be allocating to the elders.

5:
The last part of our mishnah certainly seems to have been influenced by the aforementioned Baraita.

We learned of the concept of 'Met Mitzvah', a corpse which must be buried where it is found. Keith H. Bierman asks:

Is the gemara really meant to be taken as read? That is, if the corpse is found in the middle of the roadway, the finder would bury him in the roadway? Wouldn't this cause problems for Cohanim traveling? I would have thought that the site "he acquired" would be nearby, but slightly off the roadway. But I don't have a halachic reason (other than not wanting to "treif up" wandering Cohanim.

I respond:

Keith asks a very good question, but it is a non-starter. The passage that I quoted from the Shulĥan Arukh is, in fact, dealing with the behaviour of a Kohen when he discovers a 'Met Mitzvah. I omitted much of the quotation because it was not necessary to the shiur, but here is the quotation [Shulĥan Arukh, Yoreh De'ah 374] in greater detail:

As far as burying in the road is concerned, we must remember that the roads we are speaking of are really no more than paths and if a body is interred in the pathway it will be clearly marked so that Kohanim can avoid it. Indeed, the Mishnah [Shekalim 1:1] states that on the 1st Adar agents of the Bet Mikdash would go forth to perform various tasks, one of which was to make certain that all graves on public land were clearly marked so that pilgrims going up to Jerusalem for Pesaĥ would not become inadvertently impure.

I have been asked by my esteemed colleague, Rabbi B.D. Lerner, to bring to your attention the following Conservative/Masorti guide to Passover. Please direct your browser to http://www.jewishfreeware.org where you will find the 155-page guide available for online consultation or for free download in pdf format.