cellio | murder, manslaughter, and cities of refuge

The Hebrew root reish-tzadi-chet means "murder", as in the ten commandments, where it says "lo tirtzach". (Murder, not kill. Just about everyone trying to post ten-commandment plaques in schools and courtrooms is using a translation that is not consistent with the original Hebrew. Which, granted, might not be a priority for people who take their text from the Greek.)

Murder is a capital offense, but accidental killing is not, and the torah sets aside cities of refuge where the manslaughterer can go for safety. (He's fleeing vengeful relatives, not the law.) Every translation I've seen describes the cities as for the manslaughterer or accidental killer.

The torah-study group just got to the passage in Deuteronomy that repeats this description. And it says the person who can go there is a "rotzeach", a murderer. I went back to the passage in Numbers where the command is given and it, too, says "rotzeach". Why? Hebrew has a perfectly good word for "kill" -- the root hei-reish-gimel, "harog" (in verb form). Why does the torah say rotzeach, rather than horeig, and why does everyone translate it "manslaughterer" (or equivalent) rather than "murderer"?

While murder is a capital offense, getting a conviction is pretty difficult under halacha. You need two eye-witnesses, who must have warned the person that he is about to commit a capital offense and who must then hear him say he knows that and intends to do it anyway. The court is stacked in favor of the defendant. I think it was Rabbi Akiva who said that a court that executed one person in 70 years was a bloodthirsty court.

So I wonder if the cities of refuge are, at least in part, for the probable murderers -- the people who did in fact murder, but who weren't executed because of these rules of evidence. I'm not sure, but I think that Judaism would hold with "innocent until proven guilty" in this case, at least in matters of public discourse, so it would be considered wrong to call those people murderers when they weren't convicted. The torah, however, is allowed to tell it like it is.

Shabbat morning someone raised the question of whether Moshe was a rotzeach (provable or not -- this is pre-Sinai). He killed the Egyptian who was beating the Hebrew slave. The torah tells us that before doing so he looked "koh v'koh" -- "here and there", loosely. One person thought he was looking out for witnesses; I think he could have been looking around for help -- was anyone going to intervene, or was he going to have to do it himself? It could be either, and the torah doesn't tell us which it is. I wonder what the midrash has to say.

murder, manslaughter, and cities of refuge

FYI