[Thought exercise]
The Cities of Refuge in Joshua 20 strike me as similar to a living purgatory in which people await judgment. One major difference is that you don't have to die to enter a City of Refuge. By deciding to seek refuge, one tacitly admits to having perpetrated at least manslaughter, with a ruling on murder to be determined.
The Cities of Refuge strike me as a brilliant act of social engineering. While living in Japan I learned it is customary to admit to one's crimes, and to not do so was a humiliation for you and your family. In most countries today, including the United States, criminals are given a break if they admit to their crimes.
The Cities of Refuge, which are mentioned by God to Moses in Numbers 35.6, 9, 11, 13 and 14, as well as Deuteronomy 4.41 and 19.1, were to be established "so that anyone who kills a person without intent or by mistake may flee there. ... The slayer shall flee to one of these cities and shall stand at the entrance of the gate of the city, and explain the case to the elders of that city; then the fugitive shall be taken into the city, and given a place, and shall remain with them. And if the avenger of blood is in pursuit, they shall not give up the slayer, because the neighbor was killed by mistake, there having been no enmity between them before."
A modern jail is not dissimilar. Saved from vigilante justice, the perpetrator can remain safe pending adjudication.
One point of particular interest is whether there should be a penalty for manslaughter. The passage states the "slayer shall remain in that city until there is a trial before the congregation, until the death of the one who is high priest at the time: then the slayer may return home, to the town in which the deed was done." Does this mean the slayer should remain in the town until he is judged OR the head priest dies, or does it mean he should remain in the town until judged and, even if found innocent of murder, should stay until the high priest dies?
"These were the cities designated for all the Israelites, and for the aliens residing among them, that anyone who killed a person without intent could flee there, so as not to die by the hand of the avenger of blood, until there was a trial before the congregation."
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Thanks for this post! This was a point that I almost rushed over in my readings, but this caused me to pause and try to get a somewhat fuller understanding of this subject.
ReplyDeleteWhile the purgatory reference strikes me as a bit of a stretch (coming from a Protestant background Im always cynical!), this idea of a place of refuge is so intriguing. It is also confusing with the somewhat atoning factor in the priests death. I hope to find the time to deeper study this. I am also intrigued by that fact that Coogan points out that there are "no examples in the Bible of any of these cities functioning in the way the legal traditions describe. (p156). I wonder if their are extra-Biblical examples of these cities.
The readings dont really seem to show what happens if the person is truly innocent, just the difference between manslaughter and murder.