Cities of Refuge Established

The event

As part of organizing the newly settled land, Joshua designated six cities of refuge, three on each side of the Jordan — Kedesh, Shechem, and Hebron to the west, Bezer, Ramoth, and Golan to the east — fulfilling instructions God had given earlier through Moses (Numbers 35). Anyone who killed another person unintentionally could flee to the nearest of these cities and be protected there from the victim's family until the elders could hear the case and determine whether the killing was accidental or intentional.

The system reflects a carefully balanced sense of justice: it did not allow manslaughter to go unaddressed, but it also refused to let an accidental death be treated the same as murder, protecting the innocent from vengeance while a proper hearing took place. It's a detail easy to overlook in the Old Testament law but one that reveals how much thought went into building a just society for Israel from its earliest days in the land.

Alongside the cities of refuge, forty-eight towns were also set aside for the Levites, scattered among the other tribes' territories rather than concentrated in one region, since the Levites received no full tribal inheritance of their own. This kept priests and teachers of the Law dispersed throughout the nation, present in ordinary communities rather than isolated in a single religious center.

Scripture references

• Joshua 20:1-9