What is it about?
Deuteronomy 19 and Numbers 35 each provide cities of refuge or asylum for unintentional killers, but in each text the cities function differently and are provided for different reasons. Deuteronomy regards an unintentional killer as "innocent blood" and so provides cities to protect him from unjust revenge carried out by the victim's family. To serve this protective purpose, Deuteronomy's cities are evenly distributed throughout the land, and the killer is free to leave once he no longer needs protection. Numbers understands all bloodshed, even accidental, as "polluting the land," and uses cities of refuge to quarantine the manslayer and protect the land. Numbers quarantines killers by sending them to Levitical cities, which are set apart from the Israelites' territory. A killer cannot leave asylum until the death of the high priest provides expiation for the blood he has shed.
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Why is it important?
The city asylum laws of Deuteronomy 19 and Numbers 35 are superficial similar. Each provides a total of six cities and makes them available only to unintentional killers. Beneath these surface similarities lie important conceptual distinctions that reflect the unique perspectives of the Deuteronomic and Priestly-Holiness groups that produced the laws. Deuteronomy (along with the Covenant Code in Exodus) regards "bloodguilt" as conditional: only culpable homicide creates bloodguilt. For this reason, intentional and negligent killers must be killed, but accidental and self-defense killers must be protected. The Priestly-Holiness law of Numbers 35 sees bloodguilt as an unconditional consequence of all homicide. Thus, all killers create bloodguilt, and asylum serves not to protect the killer from reprisal but to protect the land from his polluting presence. These distinctions between the asylum laws reflect the different priorities and perspectives of the Deuteronomic and Priestly-Holiness authors.
Perspectives
This article provides a synchronic comparison of the asylum laws of Deuteronomy 19 and Numbers 35, but my observations can be applied diachronically. Most likely, Numbers 35 responded to a form of Deuteronomy 19, rewriting this non-Priestly source text in light of Priestly concerns. Deuteronomy's cities, equidistant but otherwise unremarkable, were replaced with Levitical cities. Short-term protection gave way to long-term detention. The high priest's death was given an expiatory role unprecedented in Deuteronomy but paralleled in the high priest's role in life. With these changes, Numbers re-imagined asylum in a way that accommodated Priestly understandings of blood, pollution, and expiation.
Kevin Mattison
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Contrasting Conceptions of Asylum in Deuteronomy 19 and Numbers 35, Vetus Testamentum, March 2018, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/15685330-12341316.
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