CITY OF REFUGE

“…you are to designate for yourselves cities that will be cities of refuge for you, to which anyone who kills someone by mistake can flee.”
Numbers 35:11

The Torah is quite clear when it comes to murder. First, according to Exodus 20:13, one was not to murder. But whether by accident or on purpose, murder was something real that people had to face. It is here in Numbers 35, then, that we see the details concerning the result of murder. First let me skip ahead to verse 16 of Numbers 35 that reads the end result for murder was to be death. Perhaps this is why this reciprocal is still in place today. In our times we have seen that if one murders, that one normally stands trial with an end result being the death sentence. But why stand trial? That also may go back to this portion of the Torah and Numbers 35:30, where the testimony of witnesses is called upon as opposed to the testimony of a single witness.
Mistakes are bound to happen these days, just as they were bound to happen in the days of Moshe. For this reason, Adonai required that the Isra’elites set up a total of six cities of refuge. Let’s face it, it could be easy for an axe head to fly off or an animal to go a little crazy. These things would be no different than a car accident due to bad brakes or even passing disease to another person you yourself were unaware you had. While these things could result in the death of another person, they were not meant to be purposed ways of killing someone.
The reason the cities were designed, however, was based on revenge. What may be an accident in my eyes may indeed look purposed in the eyes of another. Since another family may see it as purposed, the cities of refuge were made for the safety of the one who did the accidental deed. To protect an accident from turning into a purpose by another party, Adonai had Moshe declare a total of six cities of protection, three on the east of the Jordan and three in the land of Canaan.

Numbers 35:9 – 36:13