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Context No. 320 of 4322 · Numbers

Context · Reflection

Numbers 35:22-28: in context

22“‘But if he shoved him suddenly without hostility, or hurled on him anything without lying in wait, 23or with any stone, by which a man may die, not seeing him, and cast it on him so that he died, and he was not his enemy and not seeking his harm, 24then the congregation shall judge between the striker and the avenger of blood according to these ordinances. 25The congregation shall deliver the man slayer out of the hand of the avenger of blood, and the congregation shall restore him to his city of refuge, where he had fled. He shall dwell therein until the death of the high priest, who was anointed with the holy oil. 26“‘But if the man slayer shall at any time go beyond the border of his city of refuge where he flees, 27and the avenger of blood finds him outside of the border of his city of refuge, and the avenger of blood kills the man slayer, he shall not be guilty of blood, 28because he should have remained in his city of refuge until the death of the high priest. But after the death of the high priest, the man slayer shall return into the land of his possession.

This is part of the law of the cities of refuge, and it deals with the person who kills someone by accident. Not the murderer who lay in wait, but the one who shoved another in a sudden quarrel, or whose tool slipped, or who dropped a stone without seeing the person below. For him the law builds a careful mercy. The community judges the case, protects him from the avenger of blood who would otherwise take his life, and settles him in a city of refuge where he is safe.

But then comes the strange detail about when he is allowed to go home. His stay in the refuge is not a fixed sentence, not five years or ten. He must remain there, the text says, until the death of the high priest, the one anointed with the holy oil. His freedom is tied to another man's death. He cannot shorten it by good behavior or pay his way out or serve a set term; he simply waits, sheltered, until the high priest dies, and on that day he is free to return to his own land. If he leaves the refuge before then, he forfeits its protection. So everything hangs on a death that is not his own. The release he could never earn arrives when the high priest dies.

For a Christian reading, the shape of it is hard to miss, a guilty person set free to go home by the death of a high priest. But even on its own terms, the law says something worth hearing. My going free was never going to be a matter of serving the right sentence or earning my way out. Am I still trying to work off my guilt on my own clock, when the freedom this law pictures came entirely through a death that was not mine?

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