Sermon Tone Analysis

Cities of Refuge

As we dive back in to the book of Deuteronomy, we come to a short passage this morning that I had to decide what to do with.

The text this morning is a brief description of Moses setting apart three cities of refuge.

The topic will come up again in Deuteronomy 19, should we make it there some day, and also is elaborated on in Numbers 35.

So my decision was whether to handle this text now or later when we get to the other chapter, and I have chosen to exposit it now, since I think it is very instructive to us, not only about how we should view law and justice, but also how we as the church can respond and live out the principles behind this concept of Cities of Refuge.

The topic of justice is never far from our minds.

We want to be treated justly, we want to see justice done, whether on our jobs, or at school, or in the legal system, we want to see justice done.

The church ought to stand for justice, biblical justice.

But when you throw out the term justice today, it can be almost a trigger to some, because the word justice has come to mean different things to different people.

We hear words like social justice, economic justice, environmental justice, and so on.

Some people are uncomfortable with where some churches have gone with the topic of justice.

But I do believe that God calls his people to be those who seek true justice, in the biblical sense.

We should care about it, and when we have opportunities, we should be proponents of justice.

The topic of justice is perhaps most pressing when a human being has been killed by another, and this is where our topic of cities of refuge come in.

I’m going to read the relevant passages and then we are going to seek what this means in two broad categories: First, how the biblical principles of cities of refuge may apply to law and justice in our world today, and second, how the church is to be a place of refuge.

And we will be challenged by scripture to examine our own hearts to see if we are thinking and living biblically in this respect.

Indeed there is a lot here for us to consider.

In fact, there was certainly the potential here to make this 2-3 sermons, but we will try to get through it all this morning.

There is a passage I didn’t read, and you can research it on your own, in Deuteronomy 19:1-13, but since this passage is very similar to the Numbers passage, I will just leave that for you to read on your own, and perhaps when we get to that part of Deuteronomy, we will touch on this subject again.

The first thing to say about the cities of refuge is that they were included in the cities that were allotted to the Levites.

The Levites you may recall were to be the priestly tribe, responsible to God and to the people to stand in the gap, to maintain the temples, to perform the sacrifices, and so on.

They were also responsible to maintain the teaching and explaining of the law, to make sure the people knew it and understood it, and obeyed it.

The Levites, unlike the other tribes of Israel, did not have a parcel of land to call their own, but instead were given cities.

These cities were scattered throughout Israel.

The Levites being scattered was part of the prophecy of Jacob over his sons.

Gen49.5-7

So among the blessings Jacob gave to his sons, he singles out Simeon and Levi, and says they will be divided and scattered in Israel.

Why?

Because they had committed murder.

When their sister Dinah had been defiled, they took the law into their own hands and killed not onky the man who was guilty, but also all the males of his tribe.

So Jacob, on his deathbed, said that the tribes of Simeon and Levi would be scattered.

Levi had been part of murder, now the tribe of Levi would be responsible to see that justice was served both to the murderer and also to the one who killed without hateful intent.

The Levites were given 48 cities and 6 of them were to be designated cities of refuge.

These cities were to have well-maintained roads, and clear signs to help the one fleeing to the cites for refuge to find it.

What were these cities all about?

“that the manslayer who kills any person without intent may flee there.”

But it seems to me by studying this passage that it was also a place of refuge for one who killed, but there was not more than 1 witness.

We will talk about that part in a bit as well.

So you heard some of the examples of what is considered a manslayer.

In today’s terminology, we may substitute the word manslaughter here.

It is when someone is killed by someone else, but it was not on purpose or with murderous intent.

One of the most common examples we may see in our time is traffic accidents.

If someone causes an accident they are at fault at, but there was not intent to kill, they may be charged with manslaughter.

But if you run someone over and it was on purpose and with motive, you will be charged with murder.

Or, if someone is out hunting, and they shoot at an animal, but the bullet travels and kills a person, they may be guilty of manslaughter, but if someone walks into a church or a school or a bank and shoots someone dead, they are guilty of murder.

Now, in the ancient world, it would be considered the responsibility of a close family member to avenge the death, especially if it was clearly murder.

Now, it is not condoned anywhere in scripture to do this, but it was allowed and so if a person killed a murderer, and it was proven the person they killed was a murderer, then they themselves would not be guilty of murder, but rather would be seen as acting for the community in purifying the land of the murder.

One problem with this is that it could come about that the vengeance happened often before any trial happened.

Just like in the westerns, the cry to string him up, there was often a desire on people to have immediate justice, but when people demand quick convictions, often the innocent can be punished, so the cities of refuge were a way to slow down this process.

One interesting part of this was that it was the one who committed the killing who needed to go to the city of refuge.

There, he would appeal to the elders of that city, and they were obligated by God to provide refugee status until a trial could be conducted.

If the trial were conducted and it was determined the killing was unintentional, the guilty one would be confined to the city and protected there by the city leaders.

If it was determined it was a murder, and not a manslaughter, then the punishment would be death, and this punishment was often carried out by a family member, who was known as the avenger of blood.

It is interesting to note that in scripture, the same word used to mean avenger of blood here is used in places such as the book of Ruth, but there it means kinsman-redeemer.

The concept of relatives looking out for each other was very strong in that ancient society.

We also see, and I covered this topic on Mother’s Day, that God’s people are strongly pro-life.

Now, people have said that if you claim to be pro-life, you would be against the death penalty, but this is actually the opposite of what scripture tells us.

Scripture tells us that life is so valuable that when a murder takes place, the land is polluted.

Numbers35.33-34

In other words, if there is a clear case of murder, the death penalty was required, not because they loved death, but because God loves life.

I showed on Mother’s day the many passages of scripture that remind us that each human bears the image of God and therefore all life is sacred.

So allowing murder to go unchecked is polluting the land.

It is very important to pay attention though, to this important component of biblical justice: No one could be put to death without witnesses.

2 or more witnesses had to speak on the matter.

Now, this was a pretty straight forward thing in those days.

Eyewitnesses had to have eyes, and had to report on something they saw.

Today, all sorts of evidences are used to convict people.

DNA evidence, phone logs, paperwork, video, and other means are used in convicting the guilty.

We must remember though, when it comes to the death penalty, the bible is clear that no one is to be put to death except if there are 2-3 or more witnesses.

So what did they do with those who were guilty, but there was no witnesses?

Or if there was only one witness?

They were protected in the city of refuge, but if they left the city, the relative of their victim, the avenger of blood, could kill them with impunity.

So the city of refuge really became a prison.

There were no guards, no one forcing the person to stay, except the fear of leaving the city and being found by the avenger of blood.

Now we can understand perhaps why there is included in the ten commandments, the command to not bear false witness against another.

If you said you were a witness to a crime that did not happen, the punishment was that you would receive the punishment the one you accused would have received.

So if you commit perjury by saying someone else committed murder, and the penalty for murder was death, what would happen to you?

You would be put to death.

It seems like a pretty good way to reduce perjury.

What happens to people today who commit perjury?

Usually nothing.

Sometimes a slap on the wrist.

The one who killed and it was found to be manslaughter had their life saved, but lost their freedom, since they were confined to the city.

But their sentence was set in that the time of their confinement to the city of refuge was until the high priest died.

You see, blood had to be atoned for.

When the murderer was put to death, his death atoned for the blood he had shed.

And for the man slayer, the accidental death he caused was atoned for by the death of the high priest.

There must always be atonement for sin, and particularly, because God is so pro-life, there had to be blood atonement for every human death that was caused by another person.

You can imagine how the one confined to the city of refuge for 20 years would be envious of the one who was there only a month before the high priest died.

In fact, I found out an interesting part of this history, that the mother of the high priest would go from city of refuge to city of refuge, bringing gifts and food and comfort items to those who were refugees from the avenger of blood.

Why did she do this?

So that they would not pray for the high priest to die.

In fact, she hoped that her gifts would be so appreciated that they would pray for long life for the high priest.

I want to summarize the legal part, and then move to the part where it applies to the church.

Murder was a death penalty offense because life is so valuable.

The one who killed another without malice needed a place of safety, yet they still had to pay for their error by being confined to the city of refuge.

A murderer was only to be put to death on the testimony of 2-3 witnesses.

If there were no witnesses, the death penalty could not be applied.

All killings had to be atoned for.

The murder was atoned for when the death penalty was carried out on the murderer.