Scripture Daily

Context No. 827 of 4322 · Deuteronomy

Context · Reflection

Deuteronomy 19:1-13: in context

1When the LORD your God cuts off the nations whose land the LORD your God gives you, and you succeed them and dwell in their cities and in their houses, 2you shall set apart three cities for yourselves in the middle of your land, which the LORD your God gives you to possess. 3You shall prepare the way, and divide the borders of your land which the LORD your God causes you to inherit into three parts, that every man slayer may flee there. 4This is the case of the man slayer who shall flee there and live: Whoever kills his neighbor unintentionally, and didn’t hate him in time past— 5as when a man goes into the forest with his neighbor to chop wood and his hand swings the ax to cut down the tree, and the head slips from the handle and hits his neighbor so that he dies—he shall flee to one of these cities and live. 6Otherwise, the avenger of blood might pursue the man slayer while hot anger is in his heart and overtake him, because the way is long, and strike him mortally, even though he was not worthy of death, because he didn’t hate him in time past. 7Therefore I command you to set apart three cities for yourselves. 8If the LORD your God enlarges your border, as he has sworn to your fathers, and gives you all the land which he promised to give to your fathers; 9and if you keep all this commandment to do it, which I command you today, to love the LORD your God, and to walk ever in his ways, then you shall add three cities more for yourselves, in addition to these three. 10This is so that innocent blood will not be shed in the middle of your land which the LORD your God gives you for an inheritance, leaving blood guilt on you. 11But if any man hates his neighbor, lies in wait for him, rises up against him, strikes him mortally so that he dies, and he flees into one of these cities; 12then the elders of his city shall send and bring him there, and deliver him into the hand of the avenger of blood, that he may die. 13Your eye shall not pity him, but you shall purge the innocent blood from Israel that it may go well with you.

Deuteronomy commands Israel to set apart cities of refuge, and the law behind them is a careful, humane piece of moral reasoning. The problem it addresses is the avenger of blood, a relative who, in the hot grief of a killing, might chase down the one who caused it and strike him dead before anyone could sort out what actually happened. So God orders three cities established, spread across the land with the roads kept clear, where a person who has killed someone can flee and be safe until his case is heard.

And the whole thing turns on a distinction the law refuses to blur. If a man kills his neighbor by accident, without having hated him beforehand, the example given is two men chopping wood when the axe head flies off the handle and strikes one dead, then the refuge is his; he did harm, but not out of malice, and he must not be cut down for it. But if a man hated his neighbor, lay in wait, and murdered him, and then runs to a refuge city, the elders are to drag him out and hand him over; there is no asylum for that. The law will not treat the accident like the crime, and it will not let the crime hide behind the mercy meant for the accident. Everything hangs on the heart behind the deed, on whether there was hatred lying in wait. It is a distinction the avenger, in his fury, could not be trusted to make, so God built cities to make it for him.

The law made careful room to tell the accidental harm from the malicious one, so the innocent would not be struck down by anger too hot to distinguish. When someone has hurt me, am I able to tell the accident from the malice, or is my anger too hot to make the difference the law insisted on?

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