We talked about cities of refuge when we studied the book of Numbers. The Lord instructed the people to have a total of six of these cities to which a person accused of murder could flee while awaiting trial. Moses already established three cities of refuge east of the Jordan River in Deuteronomy 4. You'll recall that the tribes of Reuben and Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh plan to reside on that side of the river because the land there is suitable for their many cattle. But the remainder of the tribes will reside on the west side of the Jordan and the other three cities of refuge will be established there after the people take over the promised land.
Although we have talked about cities of refuge before, our passage today goes into further detail about them. In the book of Deuteronomy we've found Moses restating/rephrasing information we've already been provided with but he's been doing it either in more detail or from a different angle. The congregation of Israel needs a refresher course before entering the promised land. You and I need refresher courses too at various times throughout our lives. We can be certain that whenever the Lord repeats information in the Bible it's because it needs to be repeated. It's because it's to our advantage to hear it more than once. Nothing is in the Bible that does not belong in it. The Lord is never wasteful with time or resources, so if He repeats something it's because it's for our benefit.
Moses won't enter the promised land with Israel and he reminds the people they must set up the other three cities when they get there. "When the Lord your God has destroyed the nations whose land He is giving you, and when you have driven them out and settled in their land and houses, then set aside for yourselves three cities in the land the Lord your God is giving you to possess. Determine the distances involved and divide into three parts the land the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, so that a person who kills someone may flee for refuge to one of these cities." (Deuteronomy 19:1-3) The cities must be properly spaced out so that no one needing refuge will have too great of a distance to travel. This helps to prevent the next of kin of the deceased person from overtaking the accused person on his way to refuge and killing him before he stands trial. It may come out at trial that he was innocent of intentionally causing anyone's death. Having a city of refuge keeps an innocent person from being killed in an act of vigilante justice.
Moses provides an example of an unintentional death to illustrate his point. "This is the rule concerning anyone who kills a person and flees there for safety---anyone who kills a neighbor unintentionally, without malice aforethought. For instance, a man may go into the forest with his neighbor to cut wood, and as he swings his ax to fell a tree, the head may fly off and hit his neighbor and kill him. That man may flee to one of these cities to save his life. Otherwise, the avenger of blood might pursue him in a rage, overtake him if the distance is too great, and kill him even though he is not deserving of death, since he did it to his neighbor without malice aforethought. This is why I command you to set aside for yourself three cities." (Deuteronomy 19:4-7)
I've seen these next verses interpreted in two different ways and we will discuss these ways momentarily. "If the Lord your God enlarges your territory, as He promised on oath to your ancestors, and gives you the whole land He promised them, because you carefully follow all these laws I command you today---to love the Lord your God and to walk always in obedience to Him---then you are to set aside three more cities." (Deuteronomy 19:8-9) Some scholars interpret verses 8 and 9 to mean that the eventual total number of cities of refuge will be more than six---that as the territory of Israel expands there will need to be more cities appointed than those already commanded by the Lord. Other scholars say these verses are a restatement of verses 1-3, that when the Lord has given Israel the land west of the Jordan they are to go ahead and set up the other three cities. This means that there will only be a total of six cities: three east of Jordan and three west of Jordan. I tend to agree with the second explanation because only six cities of refuge are ever named in the Bible, as far as I have been able to determine: Kedesh, Shechem, Kiriath Arba, Bezer, Ramoth, and Golan.
A person who has fled to one of these cities may be found innocent at trial. The avenger of blood will not be allowed to take the life of the person found innocent of intentionally causing the death of his fellow man. But a person found guilty at trial will be protected no longer in a city of refuge. He has deliberately and with malice aforethought taken the life of another human being and is deserving of the death penalty which will be carried out by the one whose right it is to avenge his relative's death, for the Lord declared in Genesis that from every human being He would demand an accounting for deliberately taking the life of another, saying, "Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind." (Genesis 9:6) The Lord wanted to impress upon mankind the sanctity of human life by reminding the human race that every person is created in His image. He allowed the death penalty because murder is such a serious crime---the worst crime (physically speaking) that one person can perpetrate upon another. The only crime worse than this, which we've discussed before, is deliberately leading another person into perdition (committing a spiritual crime against their fellow man by intentionally persuading them to reject the Lord, resulting in their soul being separated from the presence of God in eternity). If a person is found guilty of intentionally causing the death of another, the Lord tells the congregation that they are to offer no protection to the guilty party. This person deliberately shed human blood and his own blood will be shed by human hands as the penalty for his crime, as we'll see below.
"But if out of hate someone lies in wait, assaults and kills a neighbor, and then flees to one of these cities, the killer shall be sent for by the town elders, be brought back from the city, and be handed over to the avenger of blood to die. Show no pity. You must purge from Israel the guilt of shedding human blood, so that it may go well with you." (Deuteronomy 19:11-13) I am not arguing for or against the death penalty here. I have mixed feelings about it myself, especially since it's quite likely in our own country that innocent persons have been sent to their deaths, judging by how many people have been set free from prisons based on new DNA evidence. I have no doubt that people have been convicted, imprisoned, and even executed for crimes they didn't commit. But we have to keep in mind that the justice system in ancient Israel required the eyewitness testimony of two or more people before anyone could be sentenced to death. We were presented with this rule in Deuteronomy 17:6 and this rule will be repeated later in the chapter we're currently studying. But the rule regarding this eyewitness testimony does not have to be used in our legal system in the United States and that is why we have almost certainly put innocent people to death. Many persons have been convicted of murder based on the "preponderance of evidence" where there were no witnesses at all to the crime but where there was enough evidence (circumstantial though it may be) to help a judge or jury believe, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the accused person actually committed the crime. So we see that it was far less likely for an innocent person to be put to death in ancient Israel that it is under the justice systems of many modern nations.
Though I am not here to argue for or against the death penalty, we can see that there were safeguards in place in ancient Israel to help prevent innocent persons from being executed. We could make a better moral argument for using the death penalty in ancient Israel than we could make for it in modern times where we do not require anyone to have witnessed a murder in order to convict someone of murder. But instead of dwelling on arguments for or against the death penalty I think we would be better served by dwelling on the sanctity of life. The Lord created human beings in His image. He breathed life into the humans He created and He alone has the right to decide when and where a person's life will end. When a person plots the murder of his fellow man and takes the life of his fellow man, he is doing something he has no right to do. He is behaving as if he is in the place of God. He is removing someone from this world at the wrong time and in the wrong way. He is preventing that person for accomplishing the purpose for which they were created. This is a crime against humanity and against God---the most serious crime of all other than preventing a soul from coming to salvation. The Lord did not intend such a crime to go unpunished in ancient Israel and He put a justice system in place to deal with murder. He also put safeguards in place to protect anyone from being falsely accused because condemning an innocent person to death is murder too.
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