cities of refuge

[cellio]

In parsha Ma'asei, at the end of the book of Numbers, the torah commands Israel to establish cities of refuge in the land. These are the cities where those who kill accidentally can go for safety. (Those who kill intentionally are subject to the death penalty.)

While the talmud specifies that capital cases must follow a specific judicial process, the torah itself (in this passage) seems to say that the victim's next of kin (the "go'el", which means "redeemer" -- he redeems the blood-debt) "shall" carry out the death sentence wherever he meets the intentional killer, even in a city of refuge. This raises all sorts of questions that I hope we'll return to at next week's torah study.

First, I assume the rabbis reinterpreted this away from the plain meaning of the text, as they did with the rebellious son. I wonder what process they followed -- other text citations that seem to contradict this, perhaps?

Second, one has to wonder about security in the cities of refuge if people who flee there aren't actually safe. It appears that accidental killers are safe there and intentional killers aren't, but when the kinsman shows up at the gate, who validates his claim that he's after an intentional killer if there's no trial?

Third, I can't help but wonder about that "shall". Biblical Hebrew, according to the book I'm learning from, does not distinguish among the various senses of future tense -- "he will X", "he might X", even "he is Xing" (present tense) are all constructed the same way, and you figure it out from context. (Does Biblical Hebrew really lack the subtle shades of meaning we're used to in English? That seems over-simplistic.) Is the text using "shall" to mean "the go'el is to do this", or is it more predictive ("the go'el is going to do this")? Every translation is a commentary; I need to look at the Hebrew in context here, though I suspect I'm not sufficiently fluent and I'll have to ask my rabbi for help.

The accidental killer stays in the city of refuge until the (then-current) high priest dies -- sort of like a statute of limitations, but less predictable. I had wondered about this -- why does this make sense? Someone this morning pointed out an interesting interpretation (I think Rabbi Gunther Plaut's, but I might be wrong). The torah tells us elsewhere (Mishpatim and Noach at least, off the top of my head) that life must be paid with life, but in the case of an accidental killing you don't want to punish the person who did it -- so instead the high priest's death can "cover" these people too. I'm not sure I buy that -- it opens the door to expiation by proxy in a dangerous way -- but it's an interesting idea. And (I add) in a way the high priest is the people's representative before God; he's ultimately accountable for the sacrificial system that maintains the people's relationship with God. Another commentary likened it to the amnesty period that sometimes comes with a change of king, which sits a little easier but isn't wholly satisfying either.

The Levites, who don't get land, are given cities (from the other tribes' allotments), including these cities of refuge. We usually think of the Levites as being responsible for the people's relationship with God, but in the case of the cities of refuge they're responsible, in part, for people's relationships with each other too.

Comments

[sdorn.livejournal.com]

Does Biblical Hebrew really lack the subtle shades of meaning we're used to in English? That seems over-simplistic.

Well, of course it is, but it was hard to get descriptive linguists back then.

[cellio]

True, true. But I would have expected ex-post-facto analysis to have turned up more, too. I mean, whole schisms probably revolve around differences of interpretation of just a few passages, so being able to make a case for your favored interpretation becomes important.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

From a standpoint of knowing practically nothing about Biblical Hebrew, several ideas occur to me:
a) if it works as a self-contained system, it doesn't have to work in point-by-point correlation with English
b) maybe they just didn't think as much about the future as we do!
c) one of the ways English expresses the future tense is by using the present (we are going to the movies on Thursday)
d) if I understand you correctly, you are talking about the use of "shall" to mean not so much futurity as obligation. Is that something that Hebrew does?
and, quite separately: I've previously met the expression Cities of Refuge in the context of a campaign to support exiled writers - how interesting to learn its origin!