Levitical cities: 35:1-8. The Levites have been set apart to serve God. They will not be given a tribal land in Canaan. Instead, they are to be given towns and pastureland within the inheritance of the other tribes. One value of this plan: no tribe will be without communities of those who are called to teach God’s Law.
Cities of Refuge: 35:9-33. The structure of Israel as a nation made no provision for a federal police or justice system. The citizens in each community were responsible to God and to each other to punish offense against the divine Law, which governed civil as well as religious life. In this system, murder was to be avenged by the community. Often the lead would be taken by the relatives of the murdered individual, called the “avenger of blood.”
God has announced the death penalty for murder (cf. Gen. 9:6; Ex. 21:12). But now a clear distinction is made between manslaughter (accidental killing without hostility) and premeditated murder (hostility motivated killing). Here too provision is made to protect the individual who kills another accidentally.
Moses establishes the principal of refuge. He commands that six Levitical cities in Canaan be set aside as places to which one who has killed accidentally can flee. The killer is permitted to live in the confines of that city until the death of the high priest. Then he is free to return to his own property, protected from any vengeance.
