You shall calculate the distances[50 (#ulink_3f7b1260-ebfc-5bd8-8f15-9376b9600f0c)] and divide into three regions the land that the LORD your God gives you as a possession, so that any homicide can flee to one of them.
4 Now this is the case of a homicide who might flee there and live, that is, someone who has killed another person unintentionally when the two had not been at enmity before:
Suppose someone goes into the forest with another to cut wood, and when one of them swings the ax to cut down a tree, the head slips from the handle and strikes the other person who then dies; the killer may flee to one of these cities and live.
But if the distance is too great, the avenger of blood in hot anger might pursue and overtake and put the killer to death, although a death sentence was not deserved, since the two had not been at enmity before.
Therefore I command you: You shall set apart three cities.
8 If the LORD your God enlarges your territory, as he swore to your ancestors—and he will give you all the land that he promised your ancestors to give you,
provided you diligently observe this entire commandment that I command you today, by loving the LORD your God and walking always in his ways—then you shall add three more cities to these three,
so that the blood of an innocent person may not be shed in the land that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, thereby bringing bloodguilt upon you.
THE SMALLNESS OF OUR LOVE FOR GOD
It is probably impossible to love any human being simply “too much.” We may love him too much in proportion to our love for God; but it is the smallness of our love for God, not the greatness of our love for the man, that constitutes the inordinacy. . . . But the question whether we are loving God or the earthly Beloved “more” is not, so far as concerns our Christian duty, a question about the comparative intensity of two feelings. The real question is, which (when the alternative comes) do you serve, or choose, or put first. To which claim does your will, in the last resort, yield?
—from The Four Loves
For reflection
Deuteronomy 19:9
11 But if someone at enmity with another lies in wait and attacks and takes the life of that person, and flees into one of these cities,
then the elders of the killer’s city shall send to have the culprit taken from there and handed over to the avenger of blood to be put to death.
Show no pity; you shall purge the guilt of innocent blood from Israel, so that it may go well with you.
14 You must not move your neighbor’s boundary marker, set up by former generations, on the property that will be allotted to you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you to possess.
15 A single witness shall not suffice to convict a person of any crime or wrongdoing in connection with any offense that may be committed. Only on the evidence of two or three witnesses shall a charge be sustained.
If a malicious witness comes forward to accuse someone of wrongdoing,
then both parties to the dispute shall appear before the LORD, before the priests and the judges who are in office in those days,
and the judges shall make a thorough inquiry. If the witness is a false witness, having testified falsely against another,
then you shall do to the false witness just as the false witness had meant to do to the other. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.
The rest shall hear and be afraid, and a crime such as this shall never again be committed among you.
Show no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.
20 When you go out to war against your enemies, and see horses and chariots, an army larger than your own, you shall not be afraid of them; for the LORD your God is with you, who brought you up from the land of Egypt.
Before you engage in battle, the priest shall come forward and speak to the troops,
and shall say to them: “Hear, O Israel! Today you are drawing near to do battle against your enemies. Do not lose heart, or be afraid, or panic, or be in dread of them;
for it is the LORD your God who goes with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to give you victory.”
Then the officials shall address the troops, saying, “Has anyone built a new house but not dedicated it? He should go back to his house, or he might die in the battle and another dedicate it.
Has anyone planted a vineyard but not yet enjoyed its fruit? He should go back to his house, or he might die in the battle and another be first to enjoy its fruit.
Has anyone become engaged to a woman but not yet married her? He should go back to his house, or he might die in the battle and another marry her.”
The officials shall continue to address the troops, saying, “Is anyone afraid or disheartened? He should go back to his house, or he might cause the heart of his comrades to melt like his own.”
When the officials have finished addressing the troops, then the commanders shall take charge of them.
10 When you draw near to a town to fight against it, offer it terms of peace.
If it accepts your terms of peace and surrenders to you, then all the people in it shall serve you at forced labor.
If it does not submit to you peacefully, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it;
and when the LORD your God gives it into your hand, you shall put all its males to the sword.
You may, however, take as your booty the women, the children, livestock, and everything else in the town, all its spoil. You may enjoy the spoil of your enemies, which the LORD your God has given you.
Thus you shall treat all the towns that are very far from you, which are not towns of the nations here.
But as for the towns of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not let anything that breathes remain alive.
You shall annihilate them—the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites—just as the LORD your God has commanded,
so that they may not teach you to do all the abhorrent things that they do for their gods, and you thus sin against the LORD your God.
19 If you besiege a town for a long time, making war against it in order to take it, you must not destroy its trees by wielding an ax against them. Although you may take food from them, you must not cut them down. Are trees in the field human beings that they should come under siege from you?
You may destroy only the trees that you know do not produce food; you may cut them down for use in building siegeworks against the town that makes war with you, until it falls.
21 If, in the land that the LORD your God is giving you to possess, a body is found lying in open country, and it is not known who struck the person down,
then your elders and your judges shall come out to measure the distances to the towns that are near the body.
The elders of the town nearest the body shall take a heifer that has never been worked, one that has not pulled in the yoke;
the elders of that town shall bring the heifer down to a wadi with running water, which is neither plowed nor sown, and shall break the heifer’s neck there in the wadi.
Then the priests, the sons of Levi, shall come forward, for the LORD your God has chosen them to minister to him and to pronounce blessings in the name of the LORD, and by their decision all cases of dispute and assault shall be settled.
All the elders of that town nearest the body shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the wadi,
