Laws Concerning Cities of Refuge. You shall prepare and maintain for yourself the roads [to these cities], and divide the territory of your land into three parts, so that anyone who kills another unintentionally may escape there [for asylum]. Deu 19:3
INTRODUCTION TO THE OLD TESTAMENT
The Law Repeated for the New Generation
II. MOSES’ SECOND DISCOURSE, Deuteronomy 5-28
2. Laws Regulating the Religious and Social Life of the People, Deuteronomy 12-26
INTRODUCTION
This is again the Greek name for this book, and signifies the “second giving of the Law.” It contains the records of public addresses to Israel, delivered in the eleventh month of the fortieth year of their wanderings through the Wilderness. As Moses uttered them on the eve of his own speedy removal, he was able to speak with unusual emphasis and urgency. The allusions to the natural features amidst which these addresses were given are consistent with the place and speaker. It has been shown also by competent scholarship that Deuteronomy has all the peculiarities of Moses’ style; and any differences of hortatory entreaty and appeal may be accounted for by the mellowing effect of age.
The special references to this book in the New Testament are very significant. Our Lord quoted from it thrice in His Temptation, Mat_4:4; Mat_4:7; Mat_4:10. See also Rom_10:19; Act_3:22; Act_7:37. There are touches by a later writer, and an appendix, Deu_34:1-12; but the origin of the treatise as a whole must be ascribed to the great Lawgiver.
LAWS CONCERNING CITIES OF REFUGE
“When the LORD your God cuts off (destroys) the nations whose land He is giving you, and you dispossess them and live in their cities and in their houses,
you shall designate three cities for yourself in the central area of the land, which the LORD your God is giving you to possess.
You shall prepare and maintain for yourself the roads [to these cities], and divide the territory of your land into three parts, so that anyone who kills another unintentionally may escape there [for asylum].
“Now this is the case of the offender (manslayer) who may escape there and live [protected from vengeance]: when he kills his neighbor unintentionally, not having hated him previously–
as [for example] when a man goes into the forest with his neighbor to cut wood, and his hand swings the axe to cut down the tree, but the iron head slips off the wooden handle and hits his companion and he dies–the offender may escape to one of these cities and live;
otherwise the avenger of blood might pursue the offender in the heat of anger, and overtake him, because it is a long way, and take his life, even though he did not deserve to die, since he did not hate his neighbor beforehand.
Therefore, I command you, saying, ‘You shall set aside three cities [of refuge] for yourself.’
“If the LORD your God enlarges your border, as He has sworn to your fathers to do, and gives you all the land which He promised to give to your fathers–
if you keep and carefully observe all these commandments which I am commanding you today, to love the LORD your God, and to walk [that is, to live each and every day] always in His ways–then you shall add three more cities [of refuge] for yourself, besides these three,
so that innocent blood will not be shed [by blood avengers] in your land which the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, and blood guilt will not be on you [for the death of an innocent man].
“But if there is a man who hates his neighbor and lies in wait and ambush for him and attacks him and strikes him down so that he dies, and the assailant escapes to one of these cities,
then the elders of his own city shall send for him and have him taken back from there and turn him over to the avenger of blood, so that he may be put to death.
You shall not pity him [the guilty one], but you shall purge the blood of the innocent from Israel, so that it may go well with you.
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