Sotah Chapter 9, Mishnah 1. This chapter deals with the laws of eglah arufah - the calf that is brought when the body of a murder victim is found and it is not known who the murderer is. This calf is called "arufah" because its neck is broken from behind.
"Eglah arufah b'lashon hakodesh":
The Mishnah in the previous chapter taught that in the procedure of eglah arufah there is a declaration made by the court, and that declaration must be said in the holy tongue. With this our Mishnah opens: "Eglah arufah b'lashon hakodesh" - that is, that declaration is said in Hebrew. We will get to the precise identity of the declaration later on; first let us understand the procedure of the eglah arufah itself.
The source of the law is the verse: "Ki yimatzei chalal ba'adamah... v'yatz'u zekeinecha v'shofetecha" - if a slain body is found in the ground, the elders and the judges go out. The Torah describes how they are to go out and measure which city is closest to the body, and the court of that city is the one that carries out the procedure of the eglah arufah.
How many go out to measure:
According to the first Tanna: "three from the High Court in Jerusalem" - three members of the Great Sanhedrin in Jerusalem would go out.
According to Rabbi Yehudah: five, and he derives this from the wording of the verse:
"Zekeinecha" - plural, so that is two.
"V'shofetecha" - plural, so that is another two.
And a court may not be evenly balanced, for a court never consists of an even number, therefore "one more is added to them" - five in all.
So we have either three or five - three according to the first Tanna and five according to Rabbi Yehudah - and they are the ones who go out to measure which city is closest to the slain body.
In summary: In this Mishnah we learned that the declaration of the eglah arufah is said in the holy tongue, and that from the verse "Ki yimatzei chalal ba'adamah... v'yatz'u zekeinecha v'shofetecha" we learn that members of the High Court in Jerusalem go out to measure which city is closest to the body - three according to the first Tanna, and five according to Rabbi Yehudah, based on the derivation from "zekeinecha v'shofetecha" plus one, since a court may not be evenly balanced. Later on we will examine the precise content of the declaration that is said in the holy tongue.