Wednesday Bible Study: Law and Order

Numbers 35 may be difficult to understand for modern people, because it ' s set in a legal regime that seems very strange to us. The Israelite culture represented here is similar to many others in that vengeance for murder is the right of the victim ' s close kin. " The avenger " mentioned here is presumably a brother or son or father who has the obligation to kill his relative ' s murderer. The law here distinguishes manslaughter from murder, but rather than tempering the right of vengeance in the case of manslaughter in a straightforward manner, it assumes that the avenger will act anyway and therefore provides for a place of refuge. Before this machinery can be established, however, the Levites need to be given real estate, because as Yahweh ' s attendants they will be the providers of refuge. To what extent all of this actually existed in the Israelite kingdoms I haven ' t been able to find out and probably isn ' t known. I will say that in later books the number of sanctuary cities and other details of the arrangement are different, so it is at least not entirely accurate. In any event, none of this has anything to do with Jewish or Christian practice after the destruction of the Second Temple, although vaguely related concepts of sanctuary survived, though not for manslaughter which is now the responsibility of the state-sponsored legal system. Here it is, with a few additional comments.35 On the plains of Moab by the Jordan across from Jericho, theLord said t...
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