Sunday Sermonette: Is there an echo in here?

The concept of the cities of refuge is evidently one of Yahweh ' s most important ideas, because he repeats the instructions for them five times: Exodus 21, Numbers 35, Deuteronomy 4 and 19, and again here. Why this bears so much repetition I can ' t say, but this does give us some insight into the nature of the society organized around tribe and clan.  The Torah at several points specifies lex talionis, summarized as " eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, " with the possibility in some cases of substituting monetary compensation. But it is not clear who decides these matters, and whether there are formally authorized  judges. Priests are given authority to adjudicate some limited categories of dispute, such as whether a pregnancy is the result of adultery, but whether this extends to what we would consider criminal law is not specified. What is mentioned here is " trial before the assembly " but what this consists of and how it is conducted is not described. There does not appear to be any law enforcement apparatus, rather the community is called upon to stone blasphemers and conduct this " trial before the assembly, " and clearly families are responsible for vengeance in the case of murder. Hence the sanctuary cities. Yahweh expects that in the case of what we would call negligent manslaughter, or even accidental death, the victims family will try to kill the perpetrator. That doesn ' t seem quite right, so we get this kludgy solution. Evidently this was...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs