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Full Episode
Hey, Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble, and I'm your host for The Bible Recap. Today we finished our fifth book of the Bible. We are almost 20% of the way through, and most of the toughest stuff is behind us. You've come so far, and I bet you've learned so much. I know I have. I'm excited to start Deuteronomy with you tomorrow, but let's wrap up numbers first.
As you know, the Levites don't get to inherit any land. However, they do need a place to live and a place to keep their stuff. So God's plan for this is to have each tribe donate a little bit of the perimeter of their land for the Levites. 48 villages in total. This land not only housed the Levites, but also had six portions devoted to being cities of refuge.
Before we get into what those are, let's back up a little bit. In today's reading, God sets out standards for what constitutes being a murderer versus being a manslayer, and that involves weighing the motives of the killer. That's a tough thing to do since we can't see people's hearts like God can. So God establishes a few things that tend to reveal motives.
Was this person known to hate the person they killed? Did he use a tool that would be certain to cause death? If so, then the avenger of blood was supposed to avenge the murder, provided there were two witnesses to the murder in question. The Avenger of Blood was a role given to the closest male relative. It was his job to put the murderer to death.
One problem that might arise from this, as you can imagine, is that the closest male relative might still want to seek revenge even if the death were an accident. That's where cities of refuge come in. Those who accidentally killed someone could go live in a city of refuge where they would be safe from the Avenger of Blood. If they left the city of refuge, all bets were off.
The Avenger of Blood could kill them. These cities weren't like prisons, they were more like the witness protection program, for lack of a better example. The killers had to stay there until the high priest died. That may sound like a weird law, but here's the premise behind it. Only death can atone for sin and death, even accidental sin and death.
And since the manslayer was not going to be put to death, the high priest's death was viewed as an atonement for the wrongful death since it happened on his watch. The Levites were in charge of running these cities of refuge as a means of helping keep the land clean from murder. This was one of their roles in service to the people, so it was fitting that the tribes donated land for this cause.
As they continued planning for how the land would be divided, it occurred to some of the people of Manasseh's tribe that the five daughters of Zelophehad, who were part of their tribe, might lose their tribe's inheritance if they happened to marry people outside of their tribe, because then their husband's tribe would get ownership of their land.
And that would defeat the whole purpose of the new rule we just established back in Numbers 27. Ownership of land is a big deal because it was handed down by God. So they needed to find a way to maintain the property according to God's commands. Moses talked about it to God, then filled the people in on the verdict.
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