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The boundaries of the Promised Land having been outlined (ch. 34), it was appropriate to add data about where the Levites were to settle (35:1-8). Had the Levites been a monastic order, such information would not have been necessary. But they were a tribe of families, and as such they were in need of real estate on which to build houses, and land on which to graze their beasts.
To meet that need, forty-eight cities (not identified in Nu 35, but see Jos 21 for the names) were assigned to the Levites. Each city was to have pastureland that formed a square of 3,000 feet per side and whose perimeter was 1,500 feet in every direction from the town wall. Altogether, these allotments would represent fifteen square miles, or about .1 percent of the land of Canaan.
Six of these forty-eight towns were designated additionally as cities of refuge (vv.9-33). Three were to be located on the west side of the Jordan and three on the east side (a seemingly odd division, given the much higher population of Cisjordanians over Transjordanians. Why not four and two or five and one?).
The purpose of these cities was to provide a haven from the avenger of blood (v.19) for the person guilty of accidental homicide (the only crime for which the OT provides asylum). In societies lacking a strong central authority, the defense of private property and life was the task of the family of the victim (i.e., the avenger of blood). The purpose of the cities of refuge was to control blood revenge by making it possible for public justice to intervene between the slayer and the avenger of blood.
Again, the emphasis in both sections (chs. 1-8 and chs. 9-33) is on the need of the people of God to run their in-house affairs in a God-glorifying way, both by providing for the needy and by protecting the deserving.