The Cities of Refuge/Joshua 20

    We see here in Joshua 20 the repeating of a command given by God to Moses in Numbers 35.  It was a command that was not in effect in the Wilderness, but now that Joshua had led the Israelites to victory in the Promised Land of Canaan, it was time to implement it.  We have basically three characters in this passage.

    Firstly, we read of the manslayer.  This was a person who had caused the death of another person unintentionally.  As verse 3 puts it, a manslayer is one who had struck any person without intent or unknowingly.   If two men were working on a house and one man accidentally dropped a stone and it struck the man below him and killed him, he would be labeled as a manslayer.  If a man struck a tree with what had been a perfectly intact axe and the head flew off and struck a bystander, he would be a manslayer.  This category did not include what we would call murderers—anyone who tried to kill another person without just cause.  As Matthew Henry puts it so eloquently, the manslayer was one “whose hand was guilty, but not his heart.”

    Our second character is the avenger of blood.  The Hebrew word is go’el.  The avenger of blood was the closest male relative.  The go’el had two responsibilities: 1) to redeem his brother’s person or land, and 2) to execute justice upon his brother’s murderer.  This was not vigilante justice.  The Avenger was not some superhero acting on his own authority to teach bad guys a lesson.  He was officially sanctioned under the law to perform this duty.  He was not necessarily the one who killed his brother’s murderer.  Instead, his first duty was to find and bring back the culprit for a proper trial.

    Our third character is the great city of refuge.  If you look into the geography of these six cities there are two themes that come out.  These cities were all cities set on hills.  They acted as beacons of hope and safety to those who were forced to their gates.  They were also all cities that were given to the Levites.  The manslayer was not deprived of religious fellowship like the leper was.  No, he was sent to take refuge among the religious servants of God. 

    Well, here’s how it all played out.  When a man accidentally killed another man, he could be sure that the dead man’s redeemer/avenger of blood would soon be after him.  The concept of the avenger of blood was not found only in the Hebrew culture.  Many eastern nations practiced this country.  What makes God’s law unique is that it distinguished between true murder and accidental manslaughter.  Other nations had no such distinction, which led to repeated massacres going back and forth between families.  These massacres had absolutely nothing to do with justice.  God, in His infinite wisdom, provided for a way of escape for the innocent man.  He was to flee his home town and head towards the nearest city of refuge.  No tribe had a monopoly on these cities.  They were evenly spread throughout the kingdom, with three on each side of the Jordan. 

    The manslayer would have to plead his case before the elders of the city of refuge, demonstrating why he was innocent and deserves harbor.  The elders of the city were not to hand him over to the avenger.  The man would have to live there until the high priest of that time died.  This information would probably travel most quickly to the cities of the Levites, another reason I believe that the Levites inhabited the cities of refuge.  If the manslayer left the city of refuge, he was essentially admitting his guilt and giving up his immunity.  

    Are there any applications that we can draw from this passage?  Certainly there are.  Firstly, note that the law was not rigidly white to be applied without discernment.  This law is characteristic of all the Old Testament laws, which had to be applied with the utmost of wisdom.  No one was to be declared guilty or innocent on a technicality.  A trial was to be held to determine if there was evidence that this man had previously threatened the man whom he had killed.  Was there any evidence of foul play?  Did these men have previous violent encounters?  Were there two or three witnesses?  Had the man been previously warned about the dangerous condition of a tool or a piece of property?  Moses appointed judges who were supposed to ensure that God’s law was not abused by allowing men to jump through loopholes.  There was to be a trial at the location of the incident, if possible, and then also at the city of refuge.  If the elders of the city allowed a guilty man to go free, the blood he had shed was on their heads.  Our laws should reflect this same idea of law.  We ought to elect men who are wise and have discernment when it comes to law, and not men who seek to twist the law.

    Secondly, while God is certainly concerned with what we do with our hands, He is especially concerned with the intent of our hearts.  It is not just the outward actions that He judges, but that which motivates those actions.  Now, no man can read the heart of another.  No matter how well a judge or a jury studies the evidence, they will never truly ever be able to discern the heart.  That is not their duty.  Their duty is to do their very best to bring about justice, and to let God deal with the rest.  Hypocrites are not well-spoken-of in the Bible.  Let the hypocrite be warned: you may fool men, but you will never fool God.  It would be better for you to reject God openly than to go through the motions outwardly while inwardly rejecting God. 

    Thirdly and finally, the cities of refuge give us a picture of the hope set before us in Jesus Christ.  He is a city set on a hill to which we can look with eager expectation of deliverance.  We have been justified before God.  We have been declared innocent.  As Romans 8:33 says, “Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect?  It is God who justifies.”  We can run towards Christ knowing that He will embrace us and shelter us from our spiritual foes.  He is our Rock.  He is our Hope.  He is our Refuge.