138 



where alleged criminals would be safe until their case could 

 be properly adjudged. These cities of refuge were so distri- 

 buted as to best accommodate the entire country. They were 

 placed in pairs nearly opposite each other on the east and on 

 the west of the Jordan. For greater convenience there seems 

 to have been a provision that the principal roads to these 

 cities should be kept open. The distance to be travelled 

 could hardly have been in excess of thirty miles at most, and so, 

 easily passed over in a day. 1 This privilege of asylum was 

 evidently designed for the man who had taken life uninten- 

 tionally "that the manslayer that killeth any person un- 

 wittingly and unawares may flee thither: and they shall be 

 unto you for a refuge from the avenger of blood. And he 

 shall flee unto one of those cities, and shall stand at the en- 

 trance of the gate of the city and declare his cause in the 

 ears of the elders of that city; and they shall take him into 

 the city unto them, and give him a place, that he may dwell 

 among them. And if the avenger of blood pursue after him, 

 then shall they not deliver up the manslayer into his hand, 

 because he smote his neighbour unawares, and hated him not 

 beforetime. " 2 On the other hand, if the manslayer be found 

 guilty of intentional killing, the elders are to hand him over 

 to the avenger of blood, "And the cities shall be unto you 

 for refuge from the avenger, that the manslayer die not 

 until he stand before the congregation for judgment." 3 



In the foregoing, two methods of dealing with the 'man- 

 slayer' are clearly shown, and the method which provided for 

 the establishment of cities of refuge, obviously, constitutes a 

 moral advance upon the earlier method of avenging blood 

 without regard for the intention of the manslayer. To what 

 was such moral advance due? Manifestly to the preference 

 on the part of the leading men of the nation for a state of 

 society in which the man who kills his neighbour unwittingly, 

 should not be at the mercy of the avenger of blood. They 

 preferred greater equality of consideration, that is, that the 

 murderer should be treated as such, and that the unintentional 

 manslayer should not be identified with the murderer. 



Recognizing, then, the ultimate nature of preference which 

 lies at the root of all morality, and constitutes the essence of 

 value, we may here briefly indicate what such preference, as 

 exercised in connection with the social relations of men, really 

 means in regard to the actual facts of moral development in 



J Hastings "Dictionary of the Bible", Article by S. Merrill, "Cities of 

 Refuge". 



2 Joshua 20: 3-5, Am. Ver. 

 'Num. 35: 12. 



