Retribution and Revenge

Near the end of Bermidba we encounter the law of the cities of refuge,

three cities to the east of the Jordan and later three more within the land of Israel itself.

There people who had committed homicide could flee and find protection until their case was heard by a court of law. If they were found

guilty of murder, in biblical times they were sentenced to death, but if found innocent, if the

death happened by accident or inadvertently, with neither deliberation nor malice, then they were to

stay in the city of refuge until the death of the

high priest. There they were protected against revenge on the part of the Goal Hadam, the blood

redeemer, usually the closest relative of the person who'd been killed. Homicide is never less

than serious in Jewish law. but there's a fundamental difference

between murder-deliberate killing and manslaughter, accidental death. To kill someone not guilty

of murder, as an act of revenge for an accidental death, is not justice but further bloodshed

and must be prevented, hence the need for safe havens

where people at risk could be protected. The prevention of unjust violence is fundamental to the Torah.

God's covenant with Noah and humankind after the flood identifies murder as the ultimate crime. He who sheds

the blood of man by man shall his blood be shed for in the image of God, God created man. Blood wrongly shed,

cries to heaven itself. God said to Cain, after he'd murdered Abel, your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground.

Here in Bermidba, we hear a similar sentiment. You shall not pollute the land in which you live, for blood pollutes the land, and the land can have no expiation for blood that is shed on it, except by the blood of him who shed it. The verb

Hanaf, which appears twice in this verse, nowhere else in the mosaic books, means to

pollute, to soil, to dirty, to defile. There's something fundamentally blemished,

about a world in which murder goes unpunished. Human life is sacred,

even justified acts of bloodshed, as in the case of war, still communicate impurity.

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