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Cities of Refuge. 41 (A)Then Moses set apart three cities in the region east of the Jordan, 42 to which a homicide might flee who killed a neighbor unintentionally, where there had been no hatred previously, so that the killer might flee to one of these cities and live: 43 Bezer in the wilderness, in the region of the plateau, for the Reubenites; Ramoth in Gilead for the Gadites; and Golan in Bashan for the Manassites.

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Chapter 19

Cities of Refuge. (A)When the Lord, your God, cuts down the nations whose land the Lord, your God, is giving you, and you have dispossessed them and settled in their cities and houses,(B) you shall set apart three cities[a] in the land the Lord, your God, is giving you to possess. You shall measure the distances and divide into three regions the land of which the Lord, your God, is giving you possession, so that every homicide will be able to find a refuge.

This is the case of a homicide who may take refuge there and live: when someone strikes down a neighbor unintentionally and not out of previous hatred. For example, if someone goes with a neighbor to a forest to cut wood, wielding an ax to cut down a tree, and its head flies off the handle and hits the neighbor a mortal blow, such a person may take refuge in one of these cities and live. Should the distance be too great, the avenger of blood[b] might in hot anger pursue, overtake, and strike the killer dead, even though that one does not deserve the death penalty since there had been no previous hatred; for this reason I command you: Set apart three cities.

(C)But if the Lord, your God, enlarges your territory, as he swore to your ancestors, and gives you all the land he promised your ancestors he would give, because you carefully observe this whole commandment which I give you today, loving the Lord, your God, and ever walking in his ways, then add three more cities to these three. 10 Thus, in the land which the Lord, your God, is giving you as a heritage, innocent blood will not be shed and you will not become guilty of bloodshed.(D)

11 However, if someone, hating a neighbor, lies in wait, attacks, and strikes the neighbor dead, and then flees to one of these cities, 12 the elders of the killer’s own city shall send and have the killer taken from there, to be handed over to the avenger of blood and slain. 13 Do not show pity, but purge from Israel the innocent blood, so that it may go well with you.(E)

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Footnotes

  1. 19:2 Set apart three cities: the Israelites were to have at least six cities of refuge, three in the land east of the Jordan and three in the land of Canaan west of the Jordan (Nm 35:9–34); but since the three cities east of the Jordan had now been appointed (Dt 4:41–43), reference is made here only to the three west of the Jordan. The execution of this command is narrated in Jos 20.
  2. 19:6 The avenger of blood: see note on Nm 35:12.

Chapter 20

Courage in War. When you go out to war against your enemies and you see horses and chariots and an army greater than your own, you shall not be afraid of them, for the Lord, your God, who brought you up from the land of Egypt, will be with you.

When you are drawing near to battle, the priest shall come forward and speak to the army, and say to them, “Hear, O Israel! Today you are drawing near for battle against your enemies. Do not be weakhearted or afraid, alarmed or frightened by them. For it is the Lord, your God, who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies and give you victory.”(A)

Then the officials shall speak to the army:(B) “Is there anyone who has built a new house and not yet dedicated it? Let him return home, lest he die in battle and another dedicate it. Is there anyone who has planted a vineyard and not yet plucked its fruit? Let him return home, lest he die in battle and another pluck its fruit. Is there anyone who has betrothed a woman and not yet married her? Let him return home, lest he die in battle and another marry her.”(C) The officials shall continue to speak to the army: “Is there anyone who is afraid and weakhearted?(D) Let him return home, or else he might make the hearts of his fellows melt as his does.”

When the officials have finished speaking to the army, military commanders shall be appointed over them.

Cities of the Enemy. 10 (E)When you draw near a city to attack it, offer it terms of peace. 11 If it agrees to your terms of peace and lets you in, all the people to be found in it shall serve you in forced labor. 12 (F)But if it refuses to make peace with you and instead joins battle with you, lay siege to it, 13 and when the Lord, your God, delivers it into your power, put every male in it to the sword; 14 but the women and children and livestock and anything else in the city—all its spoil—you may take as plunder for yourselves, and you may enjoy this spoil of your enemies, which the Lord, your God, has given you.

15 [a]That is how you shall deal with any city at a considerable distance from you, which does not belong to these nations here. 16 (G)But in the cities of these peoples that the Lord, your God, is giving you as a heritage, you shall not leave a single soul alive. 17 You must put them all under the ban—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites—just as the Lord, your God, has commanded you, 18 so that they do not teach you to do all the abominations that they do for their gods, and you thus sin against the Lord, your God.

Trees of a Besieged City. 19 (H)When you are at war with a city and have to lay siege to it for a long time before you capture it, you shall not destroy its trees by putting an ax to them. You may eat of them, but you must not cut them down. Are the trees of the field human beings, that they should be included in your siege? 20 However, those trees which you know are not fruit trees you may destroy. You may cut them down to build siegeworks against the city that is waging war with you, until it falls.

Chapter 21

Absolution of Untraced Murder.[b] If the corpse of someone who has been slain is found lying in the open, in the land the Lord, your God, is giving you to possess, and it is not known who killed the person, your elders and judges shall go out and measure the distances to the cities that are in the neighborhood of the corpse. (I)When it is established which city is nearest the corpse, the elders of that city shall take a heifer that has never been put to work or worn a yoke; the elders of that city shall bring the heifer down to a wadi with an everflowing stream at a place that has not been plowed or sown, and shall break the heifer’s neck there in the wadi. The priests, the descendants of Levi, shall come forward, for the Lord, your God, has chosen them to minister to him and to bless in the name of the Lord, and every case of dispute or assault shall be for them to decide. Then all the elders of that city nearest the corpse shall wash their hands[c] over the heifer whose neck was broken in the wadi, and shall declare, “Our hands did not shed this blood,[d] and our eyes did not see the deed. Absolve, O Lord, your people Israel, whom you have redeemed, and do not let the guilt of shedding innocent blood remain in the midst of your people Israel.” Thus they shall be absolved from the guilt of bloodshed, and you shall purge the innocent blood from your midst, and do what is right in the eyes of the Lord.(J)

Footnotes

  1. 20:15 Deuteronomy makes a distinction between treatment of nations far away and those close at hand whose abhorrent religious practices might, or did, influence Israel’s worship. This harsh policy was to make sure the nations nearby did not pass their practices on to Israel (cf. chap. 7).
  2. 21:1–9 This law has to do with absolving the community of bloodguilt that accrues to it and to the land when a homicide occurs and the murderer cannot be identified and punished.
  3. 21:6 Wash their hands: a symbolic gesture in protestation of one’s own innocence when human blood is unjustly shed; cf. Mt 27:24.
  4. 21:7 This blood: the blood of the slain, or the bloodguilt effected by the killing.

The Stubborn and Rebellious Son. 18 (A)If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not listen to his father or mother, and will not listen to them even though they discipline him,(B) 19 his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders at the gate[a] of his home city, 20 where they shall say to the elders of the city, “This son of ours is a stubborn and rebellious fellow who will not listen to us; he is a glutton and a drunkard.”(C) 21 Then all his fellow citizens shall stone him to death. Thus shall you purge the evil from your midst, and all Israel will hear and be afraid.(D)

Corpse of a Criminal. 22 (E)If a man guilty of a capital offense is put to death and you hang him on a tree,[b] 23 his corpse shall not remain on the tree overnight.(F) You must bury it the same day; anyone who is hanged is a curse of God.[c] You shall not defile the land which the Lord, your God, is giving you as a heritage.

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Footnotes

  1. 21:19 The gate: in the city walls. This open space served as the forum for the administration of justice. Cf. 22:15; 25:7; Ru 4:1, 2, 11; Is 29:21; Am 5:10, 12, 15.
  2. 21:22 You hang him on a tree: some understand, “impaled on a stake.” In any case the hanging or impaling was not the means used to execute the criminal; he was first put to death by the ordinary means, stoning, and his corpse was then exposed on high as a warning for others. Cf. Jos 8:29; 10:26; 1 Sm 31:10; 2 Sm 21:9.
  3. 21:23 Gal 3:13 applies these words to the crucifixion of Jesus, who “redeemed us from the curse of the law, becoming a curse for us.”

Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let us go out in the field.”[a] When they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.(A) Then the Lord asked Cain, Where is your brother Abel? He answered, “I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?” 10 God then said: What have you done? Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground! 11 Now you are banned from the ground[b] that opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand.(B) 12 If you till the ground, it shall no longer give you its produce. You shall become a constant wanderer on the earth. 13 Cain said to the Lord: “My punishment is too great to bear. 14 Look, you have now banished me from the ground. I must avoid you and be a constant wanderer on the earth. Anyone may kill me at sight.” 15 Not so! the Lord said to him. If anyone kills Cain, Cain shall be avenged seven times. So the Lord put a mark[c] on Cain, so that no one would kill him at sight. 16 Cain then left the Lord’s presence and settled in the land of Nod,[d] east of Eden.

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Footnotes

  1. 4:8 Let us go out in the field: to avoid detection. The verse presumes a sizeable population which Genesis does not otherwise explain.
  2. 4:11 Banned from the ground: lit., “cursed.” The verse refers back to 3:17 where the ground was cursed so that it yields its produce only with great effort. Cain has polluted the soil with his brother’s blood and it will no longer yield any of its produce to him.
  3. 4:15 A mark: probably a tattoo to mark Cain as protected by God. The use of tattooing for tribal marks has always been common among the Bedouin of the Near Eastern deserts.
  4. 4:16 The land of Nod: a symbolic name (derived from the verb nûd, to wander) rather than a definite geographic region.

13 You shall not kill.[a](A)

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Footnotes

  1. 20:13 Kill: as frequent instances of killing in the context of war or certain crimes (see vv. 12–18) demonstrate in the Old Testament, not all killing comes within the scope of the commandment. For this reason, the Hebrew verb translated here as “kill” is often understood as “murder,” although it is in fact used in the Old Testament at times for unintentional acts of killing (e.g., Dt 4:41; Jos 20:3) and for legally sanctioned killing (Nm 35:30). The term may originally have designated any killing of another Israelite, including acts of manslaughter, for which the victim’s kin could exact vengeance. In the present context, it denotes the killing of one Israelite by another, motivated by hatred or the like (Nm 35:20; cf. Hos 6:9).

Personal Injury. 12 [a]Whoever strikes someone a mortal blow must be put to death.(A) 13 However, regarding the one who did not hunt another down, but God caused death to happen by his hand, I will set apart for you a place to which that one may flee. 14 But when someone kills a neighbor after maliciously scheming to do so, you must take him even from my altar and put him to death.

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Footnotes

  1. 21:12–14 Unintentional homicide is to be punished differently from premeditated, deliberate murder. One who kills unintentionally can seek asylum by grasping the horns of the altar at the local sanctuary. In later Israelite history, when worship was centralized in Jerusalem, cities throughout the realm were designated as places of refuge. Apparently the leaders of the local community were to determine whether or not the homicide was intentional.

Murder and Manslaughter. 16 [a]If someone strikes another with an iron instrument and causes death, that person is a murderer, and the murderer must be put to death.(A) 17 If someone strikes another with a death-dealing stone in the hand and death results, that person is a murderer, and the murderer must be put to death. 18 Or if someone strikes another with a death-dealing club in the hand and death results, that person is a murderer, and the murderer must be put to death. 19 The avenger of blood is the one who will kill the murderer, putting the individual to death on sight.

20 If someone pushes another out of hatred, or throws something from an ambush, and death results,(B) 21 or strikes another with the hand out of enmity and death results, the assailant must be put to death as a murderer. The avenger of blood will kill the murderer on sight.

22 (C)However, if someone pushes another without malice aforethought, or without lying in ambush throws some object at another, 23 or without seeing drops upon another some death-dealing stone and death results, although there was neither enmity nor malice— 24 then the community will judge between the assailant and the avenger of blood in accordance with these norms. 25 The community will deliver the homicide from the avenger of blood and the community will return the homicide to the city of asylum where the latter had fled;(D) and the individual will stay there until the death of the high priest who has been anointed with sacred oil. 26 If the homicide leaves at all the bounds of the city of asylum to which flight had been made, 27 and is found by the avenger of blood beyond the bounds of the city of asylum, and the avenger of blood kills the homicide, the avenger incurs no bloodguilt; 28 for the homicide was required to stay in the city of asylum until the death of the high priest. Only after the death of the high priest may the homicide return to the land of the homicide’s possession.

29 This is the statute for you throughout all your generations, wherever you live, for rendering judgment.

Judgment. 30 Whenever someone kills another, the evidence of witnesses is required to kill the murderer.(E) A single witness does not suffice for putting a person to death.

No Indemnity. 31 You will not accept compensation in place of the life of a murderer who deserves to die, but that person must be put to death. 32 Nor will you accept compensation to allow one who has fled to a city of asylum to return to live in the land before the death of the high priest. 33 You will not pollute the land where you live. For bloodshed pollutes the land, and the land can have no expiation for the blood shed on it except through the blood of the one who shed it. 34 Do not defile the land in which you live and in the midst of which I dwell;(F) for I the Lord dwell in the midst of the Israelites.

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Footnotes

  1. 35:16–25 Here, as also in Dt 19:1–13, there is a casuistic development of the original law as stated in Ex 21:12–14.

Do you think you can steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, sacrifice to Baal, follow other gods that you do not know,(A)

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Swearing, lying, murder,
    stealing and adultery break out;[a]
    bloodshed follows bloodshed.(A)

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Footnotes

  1. 4:2 Similar to the decalogue (Ex 20:1–17; cf. Jer 7:9).

21 “You have heard that it was said to your ancestors,(A) ‘You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment.’[a] 22 [b]But I say to you, whoever is angry[c] with his brother will be liable to judgment,(B) and whoever says to his brother, ‘Raqa,’ will be answerable to the Sanhedrin, and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ will be liable to fiery Gehenna. 23 Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar, and there recall that your brother has anything against you,(C) 24 leave your gift there at the altar, go first and be reconciled with your brother, and then come and offer your gift. 25 Settle with your opponent quickly while on the way to court with him.(D) Otherwise your opponent will hand you over to the judge, and the judge will hand you over to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. 26 Amen, I say to you, you will not be released until you have paid the last penny.

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Footnotes

  1. 5:21 Cf. Ex 20:13; Dt 5:17. The second part of the verse is not an exact quotation from the Old Testament, but cf. Ex 21:12.
  2. 5:22–26 Reconciliation with an offended brother is urged in the admonition of Mt 5:23–24 and the parable of Mt 5:25–26 (// Lk 12:58–59). The severity of the judge in the parable is a warning of the fate of unrepentant sinners in the coming judgment by God.
  3. 5:22 Anger is the motive behind murder, as the insulting epithets are steps that may lead to it. They, as well as the deed, are all forbidden. Raqa: an Aramaic word rēqā’ or rēqâ probably meaning “imbecile,” “blockhead,” a term of abuse. The ascending order of punishment, judgment (by a local council?), trial before the Sanhedrin, condemnation to Gehenna, points to a higher degree of seriousness in each of the offenses. Sanhedrin: the highest judicial body of Judaism. Gehenna: in Hebrew gê-hinnōm, “Valley of Hinnom,” or gê ben-hinnōm, “Valley of the son of Hinnom,” southwest of Jerusalem, the center of an idolatrous cult during the monarchy in which children were offered in sacrifice (see 2 Kgs 23:10; Jer 7:31). In Jos 18:16 (Septuagint, Codex Vaticanus) the Hebrew is transliterated into Greek as gaienna, which appears in the New Testament as geenna. The concept of punishment of sinners by fire either after death or after the final judgment is found in Jewish apocalyptic literature (e.g., Enoch 90:26) but the name geenna is first given to the place of punishment in the New Testament.

18 [a](A)He asked him, “Which ones?” And Jesus replied, “ ‘You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness;

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Footnotes

  1. 19:18–19 The first five commandments cited are from the Decalogue (see Ex 20:12–16; Dt 5:16–20). Matthew omits Mark’s “you shall not defraud” (Mk 10:19; see Dt 24:14) and adds Lv 19:18. This combination of commandments of the Decalogue with Lv 19:18 is partially the same as Paul’s enumeration of the demands of Christian morality in Rom 13:9.

19 You know the commandments: ‘You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; you shall not defraud; honor your father and your mother.’”(A)

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20 You know the commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery; you shall not kill; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; honor your father and your mother.’”(A)

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11 For he who said, “You shall not commit adultery,” also said, “You shall not kill.”(A) Even if you do not commit adultery but kill, you have become a transgressor of the law.

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