Refuge, Judgment, and Blood That Cannot Be Bought Off

Jacob’s last words on Levi were a curse for the massacre at Shechem: “I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel” (Genesis 49:7). This chapter carries out the scattering, but as a gift of towns in every tribe rather than as a sentence.

“Suburbs” is migrash, from garash, to drive out: the common land where cattle were driven out to graze. In 1611 a suburb was simply the ground lying under a city’s walls, sub urbe, not a district of houses.

Three words for what the pasture serves: cattle, “goods”, rekhush, movable property, and “beasts”, chayyah, every other living thing. Leviticus 25:34 adds that this ground “may not be sold; for it is their perpetual possession”.

A thousand cubits is roughly four hundred and fifty metres, taking the cubit at about forty five centimetres. The measure is taken “from the wall of the city”, so these are walled towns, the ones Joshua 21 will list tribe by tribe.

The rabbis drew the Sabbath limit from this verse, the two thousand cubits a person may walk beyond a town on the Sabbath. The New Testament knows it as “a sabbath day’s journey”, the distance from the Mount of Olives to Jerusalem (Acts 1:12).

“Refuge” is miqlat, a word used only for these cities, from a root meaning to take in or receive. “Manslayer” is rotseach, from the verb of “Thou shalt not kill” (Exodus 20:13). The commandment’s own word is used here of a man who killed by accident.

Joshua 21:41 records the total when the towns were handed over: “forty and eight cities with their suburbs”. The number commanded on the plains of Moab is the number delivered.

Joshua 21 shows the rule applied. Judah and Simeon together give nine towns, Naphtali gives three, most of the others four, and each half of Manasseh two, so the large southern territory gives most.

Exodus 21:13 made a promise without details: “I will appoint thee a place whither he shall flee.” This separate speech, introduced by its own heading, is where that place is finally defined.

The western cities were named only after the conquest, in Joshua 20:7: Kedesh in Galilee, Shechem in Ephraim and Hebron in Judah, one in each region of the land, north, centre and south.

“Appoint” means to select as suitable. “At unawares” is bishgagah, by error, the word used for sins committed in ignorance in 15:22–29 and Leviticus 4. The law of killing takes over the category already set for unintended sin.

Joshua 20:4 adds the first step: the fugitive stands at the gate and “shall declare his cause in the ears of the elders of that city”, who take him in. The congregation’s full hearing comes afterwards, as this verse requires.

Six is the fixed number here. Deuteronomy 19:8–9 provides for three more should the LORD enlarge Israel’s borders, which would make nine; no record shows the extra three were ever set apart.

Moses sets apart the three eastern cities himself before he dies: Bezer, Ramoth in Gilead and Golan in Bashan (Deuteronomy 4:41–43). The east bank, with only two and a half tribes, gets the same number as the west.

Two kinds of outsider are named: the ger, a resident alien, and the toshav, a settler or tenant living on another’s land. Leviticus 25:23 uses the same pair for Israel before God: “ye are strangers and sojourners with me”.

Only the iron instrument has no qualifier. Stone and wood in the next two verses must be of a kind “wherewith he may die”; an iron object is assumed deadly by its nature, so its use counts as evidence of intent.

“Throwing a stone” is literally “a stone of the hand”, one that fills the fist. Exodus 21:18 dealt with a man struck by “a stone, or with his fist” who survived; here the stone is of the size that can kill, and did.

“An hand weapon of wood” is a club or a staff, a wooden tool held in the hand. Iron, stone and wood are the materials of every working household, so the law turns on how they were used rather than on owning a weapon.

“When he meeteth him” uses paga, a verb that also means to strike or fall upon; it is the word for Benaiah falling on Adonijah and on Joab (1 Kings 2:25, 34). The avenger’s encounter is itself the execution.

“Laying of wait” is tsediyyah, deliberate lying in wait, a word used only here and in verse 22. It names the planning, as “hatred” names the motive; either one marks the killing as murder.

Joab killed Abner in the gate of Hebron to avenge his brother Asahel (2 Samuel 3:27), claiming the avenger’s right. David counted it as murder: Joab “shed the blood of war in peace” (1 Kings 2:5). Asahel had died in battle, not by enmity.

“Suddenly” is befeta, in an instant. Deuteronomy 19:5 gives the classic case: two men cutting wood, and “the head slippeth from the helve, and lighteth upon his neighbour”. The law protects the man with the axe.

“Seeing him not” is the detail that turns a deadly stone into an accident. Two further conditions follow, one about the relationship, “was not his enemy”, and one about intent, “neither sought his harm”. All three must hold.

“These judgments” are the cases just set out, a set of worked examples. Deuteronomy 19:12 gives the elders of the killer’s own city the task of fetching a murderer back from refuge and handing him over.

The Mishnah (Makkot 2:6) records that the mothers of high priests used to send food and clothing to those in the cities of refuge, so that they would not pray for their sons to die. The high priest’s anointing is that of Exodus 29:7.

The Hebrew doubles the verb, “if going out he go out”, to cover any departure however brief. The Mishnah (Makkot 2:7) debated whether the city’s pasture belt of verse 4 counts as inside the refuge or outside it.

“He shall not be guilty of blood” is literally “there is no blood to him”. It is the phrase Exodus 22:2 uses for the thief struck dead while breaking in at night: “there shall no blood be shed for him”.

“The land of his possession” is his achuzzah, the family holding. The refugee lives away from it until the high priest dies, as if in a small exile, and returns like the man who goes back to his possession at the jubilee (Leviticus 25:10).

“In all your dwellings” extends the law to wherever Israel lives. The Talmud (Makkot 7a) read the phrase as meaning that courts must sit and judge such cases outside the land as well as within it.

Deuteronomy 17:6 and 19:15 fix the number: “at the mouth of two witnesses, or at the mouth of three”. Jezebel’s plot against Naboth (1 Kings 21:10–13) shows the rule kept to the letter and perverted, with two false witnesses hired for the purpose.

“Satisfaction” is kofer, a ransom. Exodus 21:30 allows exactly this for the owner of an ox that kills a man: “he shall give for the ransom of his life”. For a man who kills with his own hand, no ransom is allowed.

Neighbouring laws, such as the Hittite laws, allowed homicide to be settled by handing over persons or silver. Numbers forbids a price even for the accidental killer’s early release, so that wealth cannot shorten the time any more than it can cancel a sentence.

“Pollute” is chanaf, to profane or make godless, the verb of Psalm 106:38: “the land was polluted with blood”. “Cleansed” is kapar, to atone. Where a killer is unknown, Deuteronomy 21:1–9 provides a rite with a heifer, because the land still needs its atonement.

“Dwell” is shakhen, the root of mishkan, the tabernacle, and of the later word Shekhinah. The laws of Numbers close with the LORD’s dwelling, the reason the land cannot be treated as merely Israel’s property.