“Refuge”

Sunday, May 25, 2025

In our Sunday morning adult class at River Ridge, we’re just over halfway through the oft-ignored book of Deuteronomy. Each week it’s a challenge to cover the assigned chapters in the detail they deserve; but it would be easy to get so bogged down in this 34-chapter tome, that we’d take a year to complete our study, forget where we started by the time we finished, and profit little from the ordeal. As such, it’s good to keep up our pace and complete the book in just a quarter, leaving some chance that students will retain a general sense of the materials therein, and be prepared to study and understand the details better, the next time it comes up. But it also means we have to entirely skip over some portions of the text. In one of these, left out of our study this very morning, Moses relays God’s command that Israel appoint six cities in the soon-to-be-conquered promised land, and designate them as cities of refuge.

“This is the provision for the manslayer, who by fleeing there may save his life. If anyone kills his neighbor unintentionally without having hated him in the past—as when someone goes into the forest with his neighbor to cut wood, and his hand swings the axe to cut down a tree, and the head slips from the handle and strikes his neighbor so that he dies—he may flee to one of these cities and live, lest the avenger of blood in hot anger pursue the manslayer and overtake him, because the way is long, and strike him fatally, though the man did not deserve to die, since he had not hated his neighbor in the past.”

(Deuteronomy 19.4-6)

It seems odd to see God taking the side of the “manslayer,” but the details make all the difference. Rather than a murderer, the focus here is on someone guilty of a lesser—though still heavy—offense. Our legal system differentiates between degrees of murder and manslaughter, and it’s not difficult to see that it has taken its cue from God. While the dead man is equally dead regardless of whether he was killed purposely or by accident, intentions do matter, and the guilt of common negligence is not in the same class as the guilt of malevolent hatred.

The law of Moses generally, and Deuteronomy in particular establish a clear-cut system for dealing with homicide—in short, accusation was to be brought by the witnesses to the local judges (e.g. 16.18), who would weigh the testimony and reach a verdict, or refer the case to a higher court, if it was too difficult to decide (17.8ff). If found guilty, the murderer was to be stoned to death by the local populace, starting with the witnesses against him (e.g. 17.7). However, a more primitive method was deeply rooted, and God allowed it continue, although clearly with the intent that it should die away from among his people over time.

The ancient way required the closest male relative of the person killed to act as the “avenger of blood” (19.6). His job was simple: track down the killer and return the favor, not necessarily waiting to hear his side of the story first. This was not really what God wanted, but Israel wasn’t ready to flip that switch yet, and the tradition existed for good reasons, although they grew less legitimate, as the nation became better organized under God’s instruction. So, as he did with other foul but deeply rooted practices like slavery (cf. 15.12ff), divorce (cf. 24.1ff), and polygamy (cf. 21.15ff), God imposed strict limitations on the exercise of this ancient judicial duty.

Of course, it wasn’t a get-away-with-murder card, either!

“But if anyone hates his neighbor and lies in wait for him and attacks him and strikes him fatally so that he dies, and he flees into one of these cities, then the elders of his city shall send and take him from there, and hand him over to the avenger of blood, so that he may die. Your eye shall not pity him, but you shall purge the guilt of innocent blood from Israel, so that it may be well with you.”

(Deuteronomy 19.11-13)

Without endorsing this savage method of dispensing justice, God instructed his people to cooperate with it, when it was clear the killer had no right to live. That’s really the key here—preventing and atoning for the shedding of “innocent blood.” In the verses just quoted, that phrase means the blood of the murder victim. Yet it was also used in the prior section, in which Moses said to appoint additional cities of refuge, if the nation’s borders expanded enough to warrant it,

“lest innocent blood be shed in your land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance, and so the guilt of bloodshed be upon you.”

(Deuteronomy 19.10)

In this instance, it refers not to the original victim, but to the man who accidentally caused his death, who Moses imagines will be unjustly killed by the familial avenger, if he lives too far from a city of refuge to obtain asylum before being caught and lynched!

It’s a complicated situation, and (one hopes) it will remain a foreign notion to us through lack of related experience. But perhaps it can help us to imagine the very real and difficult questions that often arose in that darker and more brutal time. Such scenarios often exceed man’s wisdom and ability to give each person what he deserves. There is tension between justice—of which God told Israel, “Justice, and only justice, you shall follow” (16.20), and vengeance, of which he told them, “Vengeance is mine” (32.35). In the end, however, due to our sins we all deserve God’s vengeance! Yet, blessedly, he has appointed a refuge for his people today, too, not in a walled city, but someplace far more inviting and secure!

Kiss the Son,

        lest he be angry, and you perish in the way,

        for his wrath is quickly kindled.

Blessed are all who take refuge in him.

(Psalm 2.12)

Jeremy Nettles

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