Cities of Refuge · The Types of Christ
Cities of Refuge
If you killed someone by accident in ancient Israel, the dead man’s nearest relative had the right to hunt you down. So God set aside six towns you could run to — and you were safe there until the high priest died.
The Law as It Stands
— Numbers 35, Deuteronomy 19, Joshua 20 — before any meaning is put on itTHE ARTWORKThe engraving at the top of this page comes from a nineteenth-century illustrated Bible rather than a gallery — there is essentially no masterwork tradition for this subject, and this page would rather say so than hang a painting of something else. What Foster draws is the one thing that matters: a man running, and a gate.
Six cities, three on each side of the Jordan, all of them Levite towns. They are open to Israelite, stranger and sojourner alike — the law says so explicitly. A man who kills someone unintentionally runs to the nearest one, states his case at the gate, and is taken in. Then he is tried. If the court finds he was a murderer, the city hands him over. If it finds he killed without intent, he stays — and he stays for as long as the high priest lives.
Then the LORD said to Moses, “Speak to the Israelites and tell them: When you cross the Jordan into the land of Canaan, designate cities to serve as your cities of refuge, so that a person who kills someone unintentionally may flee there. You are to have these cities as a refuge from the avenger, so that the manslayer will not die until he stands trial before the assembly. The cities you select will be your six cities of refuge. Select three cities across the Jordan and three in the land of Canaan as cities of refuge. These six cities will serve as a refuge for the Israelites and for the foreigner or stranger among them, so that anyone who kills a person unintentionally may flee there.Six cities appointed, and open to the stranger and the sojourner as much as to Israel.
If, however, anyone strikes a person with an iron object and kills him, he is a murderer; the murderer must surely be put to death. Or if anyone has in his hand a stone of deadly size, and he strikes and kills another, he is a murderer; the murderer must surely be put to death. If anyone has in his hand a deadly object of wood, and he strikes and kills another, he is a murderer; the murderer must surely be put to death. The avenger of blood is to put the murderer to death; when he finds him, he is to kill him. Likewise, if anyone maliciously pushes another or intentionally throws an object at him and kills him, or if in hostility he strikes him with his hand and he dies, the one who struck him must surely be put to death; he is a murderer. When the avenger of blood finds the murderer, he is to kill him.The murder half of the law: iron, stone, wood, hatred, lying in wait. The city is no shelter for any of it.
Then the LORD said to Joshua, “Tell the Israelites to designate the cities of refuge, as I instructed you through Moses, so that anyone who kills another unintentionally or accidentally may flee there. These will be your refuge from the avenger of blood. When someone flees to one of these cities, stands at the entrance of the city gate, and states his case before its elders, they are to bring him into the city and give him a place to live among them. Now if the avenger of blood pursues him, they must not surrender the manslayer into his hand, because that man killed his neighbor accidentally without prior malice. He is to stay in that city until he stands trial before the assembly and until the death of the high priest serving at that time. Then the manslayer may return to his own home in the city from which he fled.”The procedure at the gate — and the trial that follows the welcome.
If, however, a man hates his neighbor and lies in wait, attacks him and kills him, and then flees to one of these cities, the elders of his city must send for him, bring him back, and hand him over to the avenger of blood to die. You must show him no pity. You are to purge from Israel the guilt of shedding innocent blood, that it may go well with you.The wilful murderer is fetched out of the city and given up. Mercy for the accident is not mercy for the crime.
You are not to accept a ransom for the life of a murderer who deserves to die; he must surely be put to death. Nor should you accept a ransom for the person who flees to a city of refuge and allow him to return and live on his own land before the death of the high priest.No ransom for a murderer's life, and no ransom to buy an early return. Money cannot touch this law at either end.
Until he stand before the congregation in judgment - So one of these cities was not a perpetual asylum; It was only a pro tempore refuge, till the case could be fairly examined by the magistrates in the presence of the people, or the elders their representatives;
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible, 1832Methodist
Numbers 35:12
If found guilty, the manslayer was surrendered to the blood-avenger; if extenuating circumstances appeared, he was to remain in the city of refuge, where he would be safe from the vindictive feelings of his pursuers; but he forfeited the privilege of immunity the moment he ventured beyond the walls.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871Reformed
Joshua 20:4
The Road to the Gate
— the six cities, and the five stages of a flightWest of Jordan
Joshua 20:7 — from north to south
Kedesh
in Galilee, in mount Naphtali
Traditional reading of the name:“holy”
Shechem
in mount Ephraim
Traditional reading of the name:“shoulder”
Hebron
Kirjath-arba, in the hill country of Judah
Traditional reading of the name:“fellowship”
East of Jordan
Joshua 20:8 — from south to north
Bezer
in the wilderness plain, of Reuben
Traditional reading of the name:“fortress”
Ramoth
in Gilead, of Gad
Traditional reading of the name:“high”
Golan
in Bashan, of Manasseh
Traditional reading of the name:“joy”
About those meaningsThe six readings above are a devotional tradition with real antiquity — a nineteenth-century commentary on Hebrews 6 gives two of them by name. Scripture never lists what the six names mean, and place-name etymologies are genuinely contested. They are printed here because readers meet them, marked for what they are.
The roadsDeuteronomy 19:3 commands Israel to prepare a way to them. Adam Clarke passes on the Jewish report that the roads were kept broad — thirty-two cubits — level and in repair. That detail is rabbinic tradition, not a line in Deuteronomy, and it is repeated here as tradition.
designate cities to serve as your cities of refuge, so that a person who kills someone unintentionally may flee there.
Someone is killed unawares — an axe-head flies off, a stone is dropped, a man dies. The law is written for exactly this and not for murder.
If he goes into the forest with his neighbor to cut timber and swings his axe to chop down a tree, but the blade flies off the handle and strikes and kills his neighbor, he may flee to one of these cities to save his life. Otherwise, the avenger of blood might pursue the manslayer in a rage, overtake him if the distance is great, and strike him dead though he did not deserve to die, since he did not intend any harm.
The avenger of blood pursues while his heart is hot, and distance decides the outcome. That is why the roads and the placement of the cities are legislated at all.
When someone flees to one of these cities, stands at the entrance of the city gate, and states his case before its elders, they are to bring him into the city and give him a place to live among them.
He stands at the entrance and declares his cause to the elders. The city takes him in and gives him a place — and he will still be tried.
The assembly is to protect the manslayer from the hand of the avenger of blood. Then the assembly will return him to the city of refuge to which he fled, and he must live there until the death of the high priest, who was anointed with the holy oil. But if the manslayer ever goes outside the limits of the city of refuge to which he fled and the avenger of blood finds him outside of his city of refuge and kills him, then the avenger will not be guilty of bloodshed
He lives inside the walls, away from his own land. Step outside them and the protection ends with the step.
because the manslayer must remain in his city of refuge until the death of the high priest. Only after the death of the high priest may he return to the land he owns.
Not by payment — a ransom is expressly forbidden. Not by time served. The manslayer goes home free when the high priest dies.
And the New Testament says this, in its own words
Thus by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope set before us may be strongly encouraged. We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, where Jesus our forerunner has entered on our behalf. He has become a high priest forever in the order of Melchizedek.
Hebrews 6:18-20The writer describes believers as people who have fled for refuge — and two verses later he is talking about a high priest. The flight, the refuge and the priest arrive together in the inspired text itself.
So they set apart Kedesh in Galilee in the hill country of Naphtali, Shechem in the hill country of Ephraim, and Kiriath-arba (that is, Hebron) in the hill country of Judah. And beyond the Jordan, east of Jericho, they designated Bezer on the wilderness plateau from the tribe of Reuben, Ramoth in Gilead from the tribe of Gad, and Golan in Bashan from the tribe of Manasseh. These are the cities appointed for all the Israelites and foreigners among them, so that anyone who kills a person unintentionally may flee there and not die by the hand of the avenger of blood prior to standing trial before the assembly.The six named and placed, and the reason given: that anyone who killed unawares might not die by the avenger's hand before he stood trial.
The artwork
This is not an illustration of the law; it is a portrait of one of the six cities. Roberts drew Hebron from life on his 1839 journey through the Levant, and Hebron is named in Joshua 20:7 as a city of refuge. The reader is looking at real ground a real fugitive would have been running toward.
David Roberts, Hebron (1839), Cleveland Museum of Art — CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
One Word, Two Offices
— the avenger of blood and the kinsman-redeemer are the same Hebrew wordEnglish hides the point completely. The man Numbers 35 calls the avenger of blood is the goel (H1350) — and that is the same word, the same Strong’s number, that Leviticus 25 and the book of Ruth use for the kinsman-redeemer: the relative whose job is to buy back the family land, the family name, the family member. Seven times in Numbers 35 the floor glosses it “avenger.” Nine times in Leviticus 25 it glosses the same word “redeem.”
That is not a preacher’s flourish. It is one entry in the lexicon doing two jobs, and in ancient Israel it was one man: the nearest relative was both the one who came after the blood and the one who bought back what the family had lost. The redeemer half of the office has its own study.
The avenger - Hebrew גאל gā'al, a term of which the original import is uncertain. The very obscurity of its etymology testifies to the antiquity of the office which it denotes. That office rested on the principle of Gen 9:6, “whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.” The unwritten code of the East conceded to the nearest kinsman of a murdered man the right of avenging the blood that had been shed. … it recognized no distinction between murder, manslaughter, and accidental homicide; it perpetuated family blood-feuds, the avenger of blood being liable to be treated in his turn as a murderer by the kinsman of the man whom he had slain.
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1832-1869Presbyterian
Numbers 35:12
This is exemplified among the Arabs in the present day. Should an Arab of one tribe happen to kill one of another tribe, there is "blood" between the tribes, and the stain can only be wiped out by the death of some individual of the tribe with which the offense originated. Sometimes the penalty is commuted by the payment of a stipulated number of sheep or camels.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871Reformed
Numbers 35:11
One more word is worth a glance. Miqlat (H4733), “refuge,” occurs twenty times in the whole Bible — and every one of them is about this institution. It is a word that exists almost entirely to name these six towns.
What Were the Cities For?
— the positions, and who holds eachCommentators have pulled this law in two directions for centuries, and the honest answer is that the law itself pulls both ways. Here are the readings with the men who hold them.
Position one · mercy
A shelter inside a custom God regulated rather than invented. Adam Clarke sets the six cities against the pagan sanctuaries of Greece and Rome, which sheltered anybody; Jamieson, Fausset and Brown describe the blood-feud among the Arab tribes of their own day to show what the law was working on.
Position two · justice
A standing lesson in how serious blood is.John Calvin reads the exile itself as the teaching: even a killing that carried no guilt cost a man his home and his land, so that Israel would learn how precious human blood is in God’s sight. John Wesley makes the same point from the refusal to shelter a wilful murderer.
And the law says both
The cities exist because life is sacred — which is why blood is answered for at all — and because intent matters — which is why the man who never meant it is not treated as a murderer. Both halves are in the same chapter.
Ye shall appoint - cities of refuge - The cities of refuge among the Israelites were widely different from the asyla among the Greeks and Romans, as also from the privileged altars among the Roman Catholics. Those among the Hebrews were for the protection of such only as had slain a person involuntarily. The temples and altars among the latter often served for the protection of the most profligate characters.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible, 1832Methodist
Numbers 35:11
Lastly, the people were accustomed to detest murder, since homicide, even when not culpable, was followed by exile from country and home, till the death of the high priest. For that temporary exile clearly showed how precious human blood is in the sight of God. Thus the law was just, equitable, and useful, as well in a public as in a private point of view.
John Calvin· Commentaries, 1554Reformed
Joshua 20:1
Wesley and Henry, on what the cities were pointing attwo Protestant readings, given whole
John Wesley on Joshua 20:2 — he calls them a type in as many words: Appoint - The possessions being now divided among you, reserve some of them for the use which I have commanded. Cities of refuge - Designed to typify the relief which the gospel provides for poor, penitent sinners, and their protection from the curse of the law and the wrath of God, in our Lord Jesus, to whom believers fly for refuge.
Matthew Henry on Deuteronomy 19: Thus Christ is not a refuge at a distance, which we must ascend to heaven or go down to the deep for, but the word is nigh us, and Christ in the word, Rom. x. The gospel brings salvation to our door, and there it knocks for admission.
Matthew Henry again, on the accidental killing: (3.) It is provided that, if an avenger of blood should be so unreasonable as to demand satisfaction for blood shed by accident only, then the city of refuge should protect the slayer. Sins of ignorance indeed do expose us to the wrath of God, but there is relief provided, if by faith and repentance we make use of it.
Released by a Death
— Numbers 35:28, and Hebrews 6:18Everything about the manslayer’s release is negative until the last clause. Not by payment: a ransom is forbidden outright. Not by appeal, not by good behaviour, not by a sentence running out. He waits, inside the walls, for news of somebody else’s death — and when the high priest dies, he walks home to his own possession.
But if anyone pushes a person suddenly, without hostility, or throws an object at him unintentionally, or without looking drops a heavy stone that kills him, but he was not an enemy and did not intend to harm him, then the congregation must judge between the slayer and the avenger of blood according to these ordinances. The assembly is to protect the manslayer from the hand of the avenger of blood. Then the assembly will return him to the city of refuge to which he fled, and he must live there until the death of the high priest, who was anointed with the holy oil. But if the manslayer ever goes outside the limits of the city of refuge to which he fled and the avenger of blood finds him outside of his city of refuge and kills him, then the avenger will not be guilty of bloodshed because the manslayer must remain in his city of refuge until the death of the high priest. Only after the death of the high priest may he return to the land he owns.The accident, the judgment, the stay — and the death that ends it.
So when God wanted to make the unchanging nature of His purpose very clear to the heirs of the promise, He guaranteed it with an oath. Thus by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope set before us may be strongly encouraged. We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, where Jesus our forerunner has entered on our behalf. He has become a high priest forever in the order of Melchizedek.'Who have fled for refuge' — and then, four words later, a high priest for ever. The Greek verb occurs twice in the whole New Testament.
That by two unchangeable things - His promise and his oath, in either, much more in both of which, it was impossible for God to lie, we might have strong consolation - Swallowing up all doubt and fear. Who have fled - After having been tossed by many storms. To lay hold on the hope set before us - On Christ, the object of our hope, and the glory we hope for through him.
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, 1755Wesleyan
Hebrews 6:18
There he was to remain in banishment from his own house and patrimony till the death of the high priest; and, if at any time he went out of that city or the suburbs of it, he put himself out of the protection of the law, and the avenger of blood, if he met him, might slay him,
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710Puritan
Numbers 35:25
The Greek is worth naming. Katapheugō (G2703) — to flee for refuge — occurs twice in the entire New Testament, and Hebrews 6:18 is one of the two.
What the Text Does Not Say
— the silence at the centre of the lawNumbers never explains whythe high priest’s death is the thing that opens the gate. It states the rule four times and gives no reason for it once. Readers have offered reasons ever since, and it is worth being clear that they are the readers’ reasons.
A reading
The priest’s death is itself atoning.Ambrose, Paterius and Pacian of Barcelona all read it that way: the man who bore the people’s sin dies, and the guilt goes with him.
A reading
It marks the end of an era.On the plainer reading the high priest’s life measures a period, the way a reign does; when it ends, the case ends with it. Matthew Henry treats the stay simply as a term of banishment.
And honestly
Numbers does not say. This page does not choose between the two readings above, because the chapter does not give a reader the material to choose with.
The man who renounces the vices and rejects the way of life of his countrymen is in flight like Lot. Such a one does not look behind himself but enters that city which is above by the passageway of his thoughts, and he does not withdraw from it until the death of the chief priest who bore the sin of the world. He indeed died once, but he dies for each person who is baptized in Christ's death, that we may be buried together with him and rise with him and walk in the newness of his life.
Ambrose of Milan· Flight from the World 9.55, 397Church Father
Numbers 35:25
What does it mean that a homicide returns for absolution after the death of the high priest, except that the human race, which brought death upon itself by sinning, receives absolution for its guilt after the death of the true priest, namely, our Redeemer?
Paterius· Exposition of the Old and New Testament, Numbers 24, 606Church Father
Numbers 35:28
Pacian of Barcelona, reading the release the same wayHomilies on Ezekiel
What does it mean that the manslayer, absolved after the death of the high priest, returns to his own land, except that the human race, which by sinning brought death upon itself, after the death of the true priest, namely our Redeemer, is loosed from …
The six names, and why they sit in a marked stripa traditional etymology, given its label
Jamieson, Fausset and Brown give two of the six meanings right on Hebrews 6:18: Ramoth, that is, high, for Him hath God exalted with His right hand (Ac 5:31). Golan, that is, joy, for in Him all the saints are justified and shall glory. lay hold upon the hope--that is, the object of our hope, as upon a preservative from sinking. set before us--as a prize for which we strive; a new image, namely, the race course (Heb 12:1, 2).
That is a nineteenth-century commentary passing on an older devotional tradition, and this page prints the tradition with its name on it. Scripture never lists what the six names mean, and place-name etymologies are contested ground. The reading is worth knowing; it is not an argument the text makes.
The same label belongs on the broad roads. Adam Clarke, on Deuteronomy 19:3: Thou shalt prepare thee a way - The Jews inform us that the roads to the cities of refuge were made very broad, thirty-two cubits; and even, so that there should be no impediments in the way; and were constantly kept in good repair. He says himself where it comes from — the Jews inform us — and it is repeated here on those terms.
The Voices, and Where Marcus Lands
— named, with the work to go and readSir Robert Anderson’s Types in Hebrewsis the voice that fits this page, because Hebrews is exactly where the New Testament’s own echo sits — he reads the letter’s figures by the letter’s own argument. He is modern and in copyright: named and pointed to, never reproduced. Where a page has no teacher on its subject it says nothing about it, and on this law the roster is quiet.
A man runs, and a gate opens, and he waits inside walls he did not choose for a death he had nothing to do with — and then goes home. Where Marcus lands on it belongs to him.