If the hallmark of God’s presence was His abiding justice, then the cities of refuge stand as the most visible reminder of what that justice means in everyday life.
This section is where the theological meets the practical. Imagine, for instance, a guy happens to drop a stone off the side of a wall that he’s working on, and another guy just happens to be walking along the bottom of that wall (Numbers 35:25). The stone hits him and he dies. What do you do now?
If you ask some people, the one who threw the stone should die. “He should’ve looked! What was he thinking?”
But if you ask others, they’ll argue (rightfully) that it was an accident. There was no malicious intent here, so there is no justice…unless you want to argue with time and space. Sometimes things just happen.
None of that matters if it was your family member who was hit by the rock, though. You’re angry; someone has to pay for what happened.
That’s why the cities of refuge are so important—and borderline irreplaceable in ancient Israel. If the family member of the one who dies (the “blood-avenger” in this section) wants justice, they can have it, but they have to head to the city of refuge in order to find it.
Likewise, the one who threw the rock wants justice too, but mainly so they can plead their case. He assumes he’ll be able to prove it was just an accident, but only if the one he’s pleading to is objective. The family of the deceased most likely won’t be so impersonal.
So, in the aforementioned situation where the man throws the rock and someone dies, his responsibility is to run to the city as fast as his little legs will take him. Deuteronomy 19:6 says that the blood-avenger could overcome the accidental killer if the cities were too far away, so you wanted to make it there as fast as possible.
The cities were equally spaced, as well. Once the people took the land, they apportioned six cities that were spread out equidistant from each other. And, just as God commanded here, they put them on both sides of the Jordan—three on the east, and three on the west.
According to best estimates for the cities of refuge, the farthest one would have to travel to reach one is a couple of days, at most. But you could probably make it a lost faster if you had an angry family on your heels.
Once you reached the city, it’s up to the courts to decide your fate. If you’re innocent, you’re still restricted to the city of refuge until the death of the high priest (Numbers 35:25-28). But if you’re guilty, the blood-avenger is required to put you to death.
I’ve heard lots of people argue that God is unjust in the way that He deals with people, but the cities of refuge prove otherwise. His desire to interrupt the flow of retribution—where one person kills another and it escalates from there—is what makes Him the ultimate Judge.
Instead of letting people operate based on their own interpretation of what’s fair and what’s not, He forces everyone to slow down and think through their actions.
Human life isn’t to be taken lightly.