Parshat Mas’ey: Numbers 33:1 - 36:13: By Rabbi Denise L. Eger

As the book of Numbers comes to a close with this week’s portion, Mas’ey, we learn about the six cities of refuge. These were special towns of the Levites that were to be established by the Israelites. Three on the east side of the Jordan and three towns on the west side of the Jordan. The Levites were the priests. They received no province in the Promised Land for their tribe. Rather this portion instructs Moses to establish levitical cities scattered throughout the different tribal land holdings. This way the priests would be close to the people and able to minister to their need to be close to God. The larger tribes would give more land to establish these priestly cities than the smaller tribes. All in all there would be 42 cities throughout the Promised Land and an additional six among these special cities that are called the cities of refuge.

The city of refuge was established as a kind of sanctuary for those who unintentionally murdered another person. They were able to flee to a city of refuge, be tried there and to escape the wrath of the person known as the blood avenger. If the suspect was truly found to have murdered unintentionally then that person could stay securely in one of these six special towns. They stayed until the death of the high priest according to our text when pardon would be granted and they could safely leave without the blood avenger seeking them out.

This system of cities of refuge was specifically for murder without forethought. Premeditated murder was a different category all together in the Torah. But it was difficult to prove as two witnesses were necessary.

Thank goodness that today we no longer sanction the blood avengers. Even the cities of refuge in this week’s portion are one way to help ease this ancient and very tribal mode of revenge. We still hear about honor killings in some cultures as permitted often in certain Arab cultures or African tribal cultures which are usually violence against women in a particular culture.

But the city of refuge was not just a practical way to provide sanctuary for the accidental murderer or voluntary or involuntary manslaughter from those who would seek revenge. But also there was a spiritual component. Murder is a sin. Remember it is listed as one of Ten Commandments. So providing for the murderer to live out his days in a priestly city also helped to isolate the sin from the nation until which time it could be expiated in this case by the death of the High Priest.

With so many television shows about murder and killing of all sorts and the high levels of violence and death reported daily in the news media we perhaps forget how traumatic the murder of another human being really is. To extinguish the life from another person whether planned or unplanned diminishes the humanity of us all. For we are all linked through the Divine Breath that God breathed into the first human being. Murder of any classification is truly a sin and a violation of not only human law but the Divine and Holy Code of our tradition. The sin violates according to our tradition not just the relationships between the particular human beings but violates the relationship to God and to the nation of Israel as a whole and if it takes place in the Promised Land the sin is still in the land itself!

So even as news of murder and violence surround us and even as movies and television and books publicize and make us inured to murder, let us remember and re-focus on the sanctity of human life and the teaching of our tradition to “Choose Life”.

Posted by Jimmy at July 28, 2008 04:37 PM