Numbers 35 - 36 (10th Mar) - Stephanie

Numbers 35

Towns for the Levites

The Lord’s command for the Israelites is to provide 48 towns for the Levites to dwell in. If you recall in Num 18:20, the Levites had no “state” or “province” within Israel and their inheritance was to be God alone. Yet God provided and commanded for Israel to give to the Levites in the proportion of the inheritance that each tribe possessed (Num 35:8), not only towns for the Levites to dwell in but pasturelands for their cattle, flocks and other livestocks as well.

Cities of Refuge

We all know that “Thou shall not murder” is the sixth of the Ten Commandments. Here, we look further on acts which amount to murder (v16-21), acts which do not amount to murder but manslaughter (v22-24), laws in ascertaining murder (v30-32) and the penalty for murder (v33-34).

Of the 48 towns, 6 were to be cities of refuge (3 on each side of Jordan and Canaan – evenly distributed with proper roads built to provide easy access for all, see Joshua 20:7-8 and Deuteronomy 19:3), designated as places where someone who had accidentally killed another could escape to from the vengeance of outraged relatives or friends of the victim. There, they could safely await trial to officially determine their guilt or innocence. These cities were not places to escape justice, but rather places that saw justice to be done.

In the same way, the cities of refuge reminded me that God Himself is our refuge. I believe that there were surely times where we have been wrongly accused or misunderstood by others and as a result find ourselves in threatening situations. The good news is this - God looks after those being wrongly accused or misunderstood, those who inadvertently got into trouble and thus became most vulnerable to the anger of others.

While not glossing over the wrong done, God makes sure that things do not go from bad to worse through unjust punishments. The society we live in today may not have literal cities, to which we can flee to, yet we must always remember that we can always flee to God who truly cares for us because through Him, all of us can find refuge no matter how threatening our circumstances may be.

Numbers 36

Having thought through the implications of women inheriting tribal land and then marrying into another tribe, the relatives of Zelophehad (Num 27:1-11) realized that his daughters' land would eventually go to the tribes of their husbands. The Lord’s command then is for Zelophehad’s daughters to marry within their own tribe. In this way, no inheritance in Israel is to pass from one tribe to another, for each Israelite tribe is to keep the land it inherits.

Hence, Zelophehad’s daughters all married within the clans of the descendents of Manasseh son of Joseph and their inheritance continued to remain in their father’s clan and tribe.