Joshua Intensive — Unit 9: Cities of Refuge & the Altar of Witness

Joshua 20 begins with one of the simplest sentences in the book and one of the most pastoral. "The LORD also spake unto Joshua, saying, Speak to the children of Israel, saying, Appoint out for you cities of refuge, whereof I spake unto you by the hand of Moses" (Joshua 20:1–2). The conquest is over. The land has been allotted. Now the LORD turns His attention to a different kind of question: when something terrible happens in the new country — a tragic accident, a death no one intended — where does the man who caused it go to be safe?

Other refuge have I none.

A refuge is a safe place. People need a safe place to go when there is trouble. Wayne tells of a woman from his pastoral years in Cochrane — her name was Karen. She started coming to the church and seemed nice but kept to herself. She had several daughters who came with her. Later Wayne and his wife learned that Karen was originally from a large city about four hours away. Her husband had been abusive. She had run away with her girls to a safe-house. She had a restraining order against him; it had done no good. She was very much afraid. So the safe-house had helped her set up a new life with a new identity and a new name. Her refuge was a safe house four hours away from her husband. Karen knew, before any of us could explain Joshua 20 to her, what a city of refuge actually felt like.

The book of Joshua now turns away from conquest and away from the boundary lines of inheritance and walks into one of the gentlest provisions in the entire Old Testament law. The God who has just allotted the land takes more than fifty verses (chapter 20 plus the levitical-cities list of chapter 21) to make sure that no one in the new country falls through the cracks. Anyone — an Israelite or a foreigner living among them — who kills another person unintentionally has a place to run. Six cities, three on each side of the Jordan, sit on highways at calculated distances so that no one in Israel is more than a hard day's run from a refuge.

This unit walks the three-chapter arc that closes the inheritance section. Section I sits with the law itself: the difference between premeditated murder and what we today call manslaughter, and the role of the avenger of blood. Section II names the three cities west of the Jordan and the three east of it. Section III turns to the five remarkable features of the cities that Wayne pulls out of the law and rabbinic tradition — the closeness, the open gates, the cleared roads, the singular safety, and the high priest's death as the release. Section IV listens to Corrie ten Boom and her father's lesson of strength given just in time. Section V follows Hebrews 6:18 from the cities of refuge into the bosom of Christ. Section VI walks the levitical-cities list of chapter 21 and notices the quiet way the inheritance ends: "there failed not ought of any good thing which the LORD had spoken." Section VII follows Reuben, Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh home east of the Jordan and watches a misunderstanding nearly become a civil war over an altar that turned out to be a witness. The Closing prays Wesley's hymn one more time over the chapter and over the believer.

The law of refuge has its full background in three Old Testament passages: Exodus 21:12–14, Numbers 35:9–34, and Deuteronomy 19:1–13. Joshua 20 is not new legislation. It is the implementation of a law that Moses had spoken decades earlier, and it sits on top of an even older principle. In Genesis 9:6, after the flood, God said to Noah, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God made he man." Murder is a violation of God's law because man bears the image of God. The principle is so old it predates Israel. The cities of refuge do not soften it. They protect it from being misapplied.

Israel had no police. There were no prosecuting attorneys. When a man died at someone's hand, it was the moral responsibility of the family member closest to the victim to investigate and avenge the death. He was called the avenger of blood (Hebrew go'el ha-dam). The same root word is the word for kinsman-redeemer — Boaz acts as go'el for Ruth in a happier setting later. The same family role that redeems a widow's land is the role that pursues a murderer. The covenant runs through blood.

But the avenger could be wrong. He could be in grief, in fury, in haste. He might end up killing the wrong person, or the right person for the wrong reason. So God explained very carefully in Exodus 21, Numbers 35, and Deuteronomy 19 that there was a difference between premeditated murder and what we today call manslaughter, or a crime of passion. A man guilty of premeditated murder was subject to capital punishment, no asylum available; the avenger of blood would carry it out. But if the death was unpremeditated, or if a man killed someone by accident, the slayer could flee to one of these cities and find safety until a hearing could be held.

The textbook examples Moses gives are intentionally ordinary. A man is working in his field, and his ax head flies off the handle and kills his neighbor (Deuteronomy 19:5). Two neighbors fight, and one falls and hits his head on a rock and dies. A stone is dropped from a roof and kills someone below. None of these is murder. None of them is innocent either — somebody is dead. The cities of refuge sit between those two facts. They are the place where the death is investigated, the heart is examined, and the verdict is rendered.

The procedure was elegant in its simplicity. The man fleeing arrives at the gate of one of the six cities and presents his case to the elders sitting at the gate. They take him in. The avenger of blood, even if he is in hot pursuit, may not enter the city to take him. The elders hold a preliminary hearing. If they find premeditated murder, they hand the man back to the avenger. If they find manslaughter, they grant him asylum within the city walls. He must stay there — he cannot leave or the avenger may lawfully kill him — until the death of the high priest who was serving when the case was decided. At the priest's death, the slayer is released to return home. (The strange detail of the high priest's death is the hinge of the whole law, and we will come back to it in Section III.)

Notice what the law does. It refuses to let blood be shed cheaply, and it refuses to let blood be avenged carelessly. Both halves matter. The image of God in the victim demands justice. The image of God in the killer demands a fair hearing. The cities of refuge are how Israel held those two demands together at the level of the village.

Joshua 20:7–9 names the six cities. "And they appointed Kedesh in Galilee in mount Naphtali, and Shechem in mount Ephraim, and Kirjath-arba (which is Hebron) in the mountain of Judah. And on the other side Jordan by Jericho eastward, they assigned Bezer in the wilderness upon the plain out of the tribe of Reuben, and Ramoth in Gilead out of the tribe of Gad, and Golan in Bashan out of the tribe of Manasseh."

Look at the geography. Three cities run north-to-south down the western side: Kedesh in the upper Galilee, Shechem in the central hill country, and Hebron in the southern hills of Judah. Three more cities run north-to-south down the eastern side of the Jordan: Golan in the north (in Bashan), Ramoth in the middle (in Gilead), and Bezer in the south (in the wilderness plain of Reuben). The pattern is grid-like and deliberate. Wherever an Israelite lived — from the foot of Mount Hermon in the far north to the Negev wilderness in the far south — a city of refuge was within roughly a day's hard run.

The names themselves are striking when you read them as theology rather than as map points. Kedesh means holiness — the refuge runs through holy ground. Shechem means shoulder — the refuge bears the burden. Hebron means fellowship or joining — the refuge restores broken belonging. Bezer means fortress. Ramoth means heights — raised up. Golan means captive or exile — refuge for the displaced. The early church readers of these names heard sermons in them long before modern commentators caught up. Holiness, shoulder, fellowship, fortress, heights, exile. Run those six words slowly: that is what Christ provides for the believer.

Verse 9 makes a final point that is easy to miss but theologically loud: "These were the cities appointed for all the children of Israel, and for the stranger that sojourneth among them, that whosoever killeth any person at unawares might flee thither." The refuge is not for Israel only. It is also for the foreigner. Whoever at unawares — without intent — killed a person could flee to the same city, present the same case to the same elders, and receive the same protection. The cities of refuge are one of the earliest legal expressions of the gospel principle that grace is not racial. The same blood that protects the Israelite protects the resident alien. The same gates open to both.

Wayne pulls out five features of these cities — some from the Scripture itself, some from rabbinic tradition that helps fill in the picture. Each one preaches a small sermon on its own.

1. They Were Close By

The first feature is that the cities of refuge were close. The land of Israel is only about the size of the state of Maryland, so nobody could ever be very far away from a city of refuge. The rabbis preserve a tradition that, once every year, the roads leading to these cities were carefully repaired and cleared of obstacles and stones, so that the man fleeing for his life would have no hindrance in his way (cited by McCartney). The state cleared the highways for the most desperate runner. Bridges were checked. Stones were rolled aside. Signs were posted at every crossroads with the single word REFUGE in large letters — so that if someone was running flat-out, they would not have to lose any time slowing down to read the sign.

In the same way, Jesus is always near. No matter how far we might be from God, He is never far from us. Wayne tells the story of a Confederate soldier during the Civil War who was placed far out in a lonely wood to watch and suddenly felt a strange dread come over him. The moon was shining dimly through the trees. While it seemed strange and unwise, he felt constrained to sing softly the old song:

Jesus, Lover of my soul,
let me to Thy bosom fly…
Other refuge have I none.

This he did, and immediately felt relieved of his fear. A few years later, when the war was over, he was at a meeting and sang the same song. After the song, a stranger came up to him and said, "I never saw you before, but I have heard that voice before." The stranger asked if he had sung that song one night during the war — and then told him how he and some of his men, who had been Union soldiers, had been hidden behind the trees with their guns turned on him, ready to fire. "But," he said, "as we heard that song, 'Jesus, Lover of my soul,' and 'Other refuge have I none,' I said to my men, 'Don't shoot that man,' and we slipped away and left you. I shall never forget the voice I heard that night." There is only one refuge, and that is Jesus, and we need Him at the end of the way.

2. The Gates Were Always Open

The second feature is that the gates of the cities of refuge were always open. If someone had run thirty or forty miles to get to the city and then could not get in — if it were the middle of the night and the gates were locked — he could still be cut down by the avenger of blood right outside the wall. So the gates stayed open day and night.

We do not have to worry about finding some weird combination of religious locks and keys, as if it were by a secret, mysterious way that we would get into relationship with Jesus. The doors are always wide open. Even if you show up in the middle of the night, you do not have to beat on the door and wake Jesus up, because He is the infinite God, and He is waiting and listening for you. "Behold, I stand at the door, and knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me" (Revelation 3:20).

One day Charles Wesley was sitting by an open window looking out over the bright fields in summertime when a little bird, flitting about in the sunshine, attracted his attention. Just then, a hawk came swooping down toward the little bird. The poor thing, very much frightened, was darting here and there, trying to find some place of refuge. In the bright sunny air, in the leafy trees, in the green fields, there was no hiding place from the fierce grasp of the hawk. But seeing the open window, and a man sitting by it, the bird flew — in its extreme terror — toward it, and with a beating heart and quivering wing found refuge in Wesley's bosom. He sheltered it from the threatening danger, and saved it from a cruel death. Wesley was at that time suffering from severe trials, and was feeling the need of a refuge in his own time of trouble as much as the trembling little bird did. So he took up his pen and wrote that sweet hymn:

Jesus, Lover of my soul,
Let me to Thy bosom fly.

The window was open. The bird flew in. The hymn was written. The next two centuries of believers learned to fly through the same open window.

3. There Was No Other Place of Guaranteed Safety

The third feature is that there was no other place of guaranteed safety. If the slayer stayed home, or stepped outside the city walls before the appointed time, the avenger could legally kill him. The protection was real but it was located in one place. There was no other city, no field, no rooftop, no hideout that carried the same guarantee. "And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12).

It is by ultimate rejection — by saying, "I do not need it, I will find another way of salvation. I am not entering the city of refuge" — that any one of us who hears the truth of the gospel and chooses to walk away ends up in the same place of isolation outside the wall. A.B. Simpson tells of a London waif, cold and hungry, who was invited one night by a city missionary to one of the houses of refuge for little wanderers. He was told to ring the bell, and when they asked him who he was, to say the three words, "In His name." He ventured up the steps and, true to the promise of the worker, received a royal welcome, and with a good supper and a warm bed dreamed that he was in heaven. A few days after, he was hurt in a London thoroughfare by a passing wagon. The card of the rescue home was found in his pocket, and he was taken to the hospital, and word was sent to the mission. He was tenderly nursed during the few lingering days of his life, and gently taught of that other portal which was also entered "in His name." Often in his last hours he would repeat over and over again, "In His name, that's what lets you in."

4. The Roads Were Cleared and Marked

The fourth feature, mentioned briefly above and worth its own paragraph, is that the roads to the cities were maintained. The rabbis say the highways were inspected each year before the rainy season, repaired, and cleared. Every intersection had a clear sign. Bridges were sound. The Jewish reasoning was that the manslayer was already running for his life; the state owed him every legitimate help to reach the refuge in time. The principle is gentle: God's grace is not stingy with directions. He marks the way clearly. The Word of God tells you, in every chapter, where the city is and how to get there. The signs are not hidden. The roads are not let go to ruin. "This is the way; walk ye in it" (Isaiah 30:21). The runner does not have to slow down to find the path.

5. The Death of the High Priest Was the Release

The fifth feature is the strangest part of the entire law. The slayer who reached the city was protected, but he was also bound to stay there. He could not return home until the death of the high priest who was serving when he was admitted (Numbers 35:25, 28). When the high priest died, the slayer was free. He could go home. The avenger of blood could no longer touch him.

Why? Because the high priest's death was understood, in some symbolic way, to cover the unintentional shedding of blood. A life was owed for the life that had been taken. The high priest, the representative of the people before God, paid that debt symbolically by his own death. The slayer's freedom was purchased by the priest's grave.

The New Testament writer of Hebrews lived in this symbol. Our high priest is Jesus Christ. He died once for all. Because He died, every believer who has fled to Him is free to go home — not in a few years, not when the avenger gives up, but right now, today. The release is already purchased. The wall around the city of refuge is the wall that the cross broke open. "That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us" (Hebrews 6:18).

The cities of refuge raise a quiet question for the believer. Where will I run when the avenger of blood appears at my door? It is one thing to read about Israel's manslayer in a Bible-study book. It is another thing entirely to be the one running. Corrie ten Boom's family in the Netherlands knew both sides of that question. During World War II the ten Booms risked their lives to hide Jews from the Nazis, who were hunting them down. They provided a refuge, a safe place, for Jews whose lives were in danger. Corrie wrote about it in her book The Hiding Place. She and other members of her family were sent to prison for following God's call to help the Jews. Corrie survived the horrid prison conditions; her sister Betsie and her father did not. After the war Corrie traveled the world telling people how God taught her to forgive even the cruelest of the Nazis.

Although Corrie ten Boom did not die for her faith, she was a Christian martyr. And yet when she was a little girl, she worried that she would never be strong enough to suffer for Jesus. Her father, a very wise man, told her to think about all the times she had taken a train trip. "When do I give you the money for the trip? Three weeks before?" he asked. Corrie answered that he gave her the money just before they got on the train. Mr. ten Boom told Corrie that our wise Father in heaven knows when we are going to need things, too.

"Today you do not need the strength to be a martyr," he said. "But as soon as you are called upon for the honor of suffering for Jesus, He will supply the strength you need — just in time."

That sentence is the story of every Christian who has ever run for refuge. The strength does not arrive three weeks early. The strength does not arrive when you are wondering, abstractly, whether you would be brave enough. The strength arrives at the gate of the city of refuge, in the moment when you actually need it. Wayne is fond of pointing out that Joshua 20 is not a chapter for the secure and the comfortable. It is a chapter for the runner. The man whose ax head flew off and killed his neighbor. The woman whose four-hour drive ended at a safe-house door. The believer at the end of his strength who finally lifts his eyes from the road behind him and sees the city ahead. The strength comes at the gate. Not before.

Wesley's hymn, sung by both that Confederate soldier in the lonely wood and the bird that flew in the open window, has another stanza that fits this moment exactly:

Cover my defenseless head
With the shadow of Thy wing.

That is the prayer of the slayer at the gate, of the abused mother at the safe-house door, of Karen with her daughters and her useless restraining order. The shadow of His wing was already over them before they crossed the threshold. The covering arrived at the gate.

The New Testament writer who saw the cities of refuge most clearly was the writer of Hebrews. In Hebrews 6:18 he reaches back to Joshua 20 and uses the exact image of the running fugitive to describe the believer's relationship to Christ: "That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us."

Three details in that verse light up only when Joshua 20 is in the background. "Have fled" — the believer is described not as someone who calmly chose Christ from a position of safety but as someone who ran for his life. "For refuge" — the language is the language of the manslayer, the asylum-seeker, the man pursued. "To lay hold" — the runner has reached the gate; he has seized something. The whole verse is Joshua 20 writ in New Testament shorthand.

And then Hebrews names the specifics. The two immutable things are the promise of God and the oath of God. The hope set before us is Jesus. The high priest who is the basis of release is Jesus. "For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities…Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need" (Hebrews 4:15–16). The cities of refuge in Joshua 20 are the type. Christ is the substance. Wayne is careful to note that this does not flatten the Old Testament law into nothing more than a metaphor. The cities of refuge actually saved actual lives in actual Israel. They protected real men whose ax heads really came off real handles. But they were also pointing forward, all along, to a refuge that is not located on a map of Canaan but is located in a Person who is not bound by geography at all.

The geography of grace runs from Hebron west of the Jordan, where Caleb the eighty-five-year-old just took his mountain, all the way to the room where this lesson is being read. The cities are still close. The gates are still open. The roads are still cleared. There is still no other place of guaranteed safety. The High Priest has died once for all, and the runner is free. Other refuge have I none.

Chapter 21 finishes the geography of the inheritance. The heads of the Levite families come to Eleazar the priest, to Joshua, and to the heads of the tribes at Shiloh and remind them, "The LORD commanded by the hand of Moses to give us cities to dwell in, with the suburbs thereof for our cattle" (21:2). The reminder is gracious but pointed. The Levites have no land of their own — we noted this in Unit 8 — but they were promised cities and surrounding pastures scattered through every tribe. Joshua and Eleazar honor the promise. Forty-eight cities are given to the Levites: thirteen to the priestly clan of Aaron (in the territories of Judah, Simeon, and Benjamin); ten to the rest of the Kohathites; thirteen to the Gershonites in the north; twelve to the Merarites east of the Jordan and in Zebulun. Six of these forty-eight are the cities of refuge themselves. Levi's geography is everywhere because the LORD wanted His teaching ministry near every Israelite, no matter which tribe he belonged to.

The chapter then closes with one of the most quietly powerful summary statements in the Old Testament. "And the LORD gave unto Israel all the land which he sware to give unto their fathers; and they possessed it, and dwelt therein. And the LORD gave them rest round about, according to all that he sware unto their fathers: and there stood not a man of all their enemies before them; the LORD delivered all their enemies into their hand. There failed not ought of any good thing which the LORD had spoken unto the house of Israel; all came to pass" (Joshua 21:43–45).

Read the verbs in order. The LORD gave. They possessed. They dwelt. The LORD gave them rest. Read the negative testimony at the heart of the paragraph. There stood not a man of all their enemies before them. Read the climactic line. There failed not ought of any good thing which the LORD had spoken. One sentence on the credit side: God promised; God delivered. Not a footnote of failure. Not a single asterisk on the divine record. The whole inheritance section closes on a triple sentence about the perfect fidelity of God to His word, and that is not a Sunday-school exaggeration; it is the Holy Spirit's verdict on seven years of conquest and the allotment that followed.

The Christian application sits very close to the surface. The believer who walks long enough with God will eventually be able to write a Joshua 21:45 over his own life. There may be other things to say — failures, regrets, mountains not yet taken — but on the side of the ledger that records what God promised, the column reads exactly the same as it reads here. There failed not ought. Every honest believer at the end of a long obedience finds that sentence waiting for him.

Joshua 22 is the chapter most readers skip and the one Wayne would not let his church skip. The campaign is over. The land is allotted. The Levites have their cities. Now Joshua calls in the men of Reuben, Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh — the eastern tribes whose families and flocks were waiting east of the Jordan while their fighting men crossed over and fought alongside their brothers for seven years. He blesses them. He reminds them to "take diligent heed to do the commandment and the law, which Moses the servant of the LORD charged you, to love the LORD your God, and to walk in all his ways, and to keep his commandments, and to cleave unto him, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul" (22:5). He sends them home with the spoils of the campaign and a benediction. The chapter could end at verse 9.

It does not. On their way home, the eastern tribes stop near the Jordan and build a great altar. When the western tribes hear about it, they conclude the worst. Two-and-a-half tribes have built an altar of their own outside the LORD's appointed altar at Shiloh. To the western tribes this looks like Achan all over again, only at the level of an entire region. Phinehas the priest, son of Eleazar, leads a delegation across the Jordan to investigate, and the gathered army of Israel prepares for civil war. "And the children of Israel heard say, Behold, the children of Reuben and the children of Gad and the half tribe of Manasseh have built an altar over against the land of Canaan… And when the children of Israel heard of it, the whole congregation of the children of Israel gathered themselves together at Shiloh, to go up to war against them" (22:11–12).

The eastern tribes are stunned. "The LORD God of gods, the LORD God of gods, he knoweth, and Israel he shall know; if it be in rebellion, or if in transgression against the LORD, save us not this day" (22:22). They explain. The altar is not for sacrifice. It is a witness — a memorial — built on the road home so that future generations of western Israelites would not look across the Jordan and tell the eastern tribes' grandchildren, "You have no part in the LORD." The altar is a sign that says, in stone, "We worship the same God you do. The river does not divide our covenant."

Phinehas hears the explanation and accepts it. War is averted. The altar is named. "And the children of Reuben and the children of Gad called the altar Ed: for it shall be a witness between us that the LORD is God" (22:34). Ed — witness. The same word the prophets will use to describe Israel itself in Isaiah 43:10: "Ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD."

The chapter teaches three things at once. First, believers should be quick to investigate and slow to attack. The western tribes did the right thing by sending Phinehas before they sent the army. Honest questions across a misunderstanding prevent more wars than swords ever do. Second, believers should think carefully about how their actions will appear to others, especially others not present in the moment of decision. The eastern tribes had pure motives and built the altar in a way that almost looked exactly like rebellion. Living wisely means imagining how the action will read at a distance. Third, believers separated by geography are not separated in covenant. The Jordan ran between Reuben and Ephraim. It did not run between their God and their God. The altar of witness is the same kind of marker the cross is — a sign that says, across whatever river divides one believer from another, the LORD is God.

The whole arc of Joshua 20–22 closes with three small sentences over the head of the believer. The cities are close. The gates are open. There is no other place. Karen at the safe-house door, Wesley at the open window, the bird on his bosom, the Confederate soldier in the lonely wood, the London waif on the rescue-home steps, Corrie ten Boom on the train of suffering — they are all the same person on the same road, and the city ahead of them is the same city.

The slayer in Joshua 20 had to wait inside the walls until the high priest died. The believer reading this lesson has the news the slayer never lived to receive. The High Priest has died, once, for all. The release is signed. The cross is the door of the city, and the door does not close. "Behold, I stand at the door, and knock" — the side of the door opposite the believer is the side that is loved by the Door Himself.

One last paragraph from Wesley's hymn fits the closing of this unit better than any commentator's summary:

Other refuge have I none,
hangs my helpless soul on Thee;
leave, ah, leave me not alone,
still support and comfort me.
All my trust on Thee is stayed,
all my help from Thee I bring;
cover my defenseless head
with the shadow of Thy wing.

That is Joshua 20 in a single stanza. The flight. The seizure. The trust. The cover. Other refuge have I none.