The Cities of Refuge Established

Then Moses set aside three cities east of the Jordan, to which anyone who had killed a person could flee if they had unintentionally killed their neighbor without malice aforethought. One of the cities was Bezer. Cities of refuge. Safe places where you can go if you've killed someone accidentally. You're protected from vengeance while your case is decided. Justice waits. It doesn't rush. It allows for the possibility that not all killings are murder. Not all deaths are intentional. Sometimes accidents happen. And when they do, there should be a place of asylum. I think about how much grace those cities represent. In a culture of immediate revenge, they say: slow down. Let's figure out what actually happened. Let's distinguish between accident and intent. Let's not execute someone for something they didn't mean to do. We need cities of refuge in our current moment. We need places where people can go when they've made a mistake, when they've hurt someone without intending to, when they're afraid of the violence that might come. Grace delays punishment long enough to determine what actually happened.