Cities of Refuge

The Cities of Refuge were six Levitical towns in the Kingdom of Israel and the Kingdom of Judah in which the perpetrators of manslaughter could claim the right of asylum. Maimonides, invoking talmudic literature, expands the city of refuge count to all 48 Levitical cities. Outside of these cities, blood vengeance against such perpetrators was allowed by law. The Torah names the six cities as being cities of refuge: Golan, Ramoth, and Bosor, on the east of the Jordan River, and Kedesh, Shechem, and Hebron on the western side.

In the Priestly Code, the regulations concerning the cities of refuge state that, once he had claimed asylum, a perpetrator had to be taken from the city and put on trial; if the trial found that the perpetrator was innocent of murder, then the perpetrator had to be returned under guard (for their own protection) to the city in which they had claimed asylum. This law code treats blood money as an unacceptable device that would compound the crime, insisting that atonement can only be made by blood.

The Priestly Code states that no harm was allowed to come to the perpetrator once the Jewish high priest had died, at which point the perpetrator was free to leave the city without fear; the Mishnah states that the high priest's mother would traditionally supply clothing and food to those claiming asylum in the cities of refuge, so that these individuals would not wish for the death of her son. The Talmud argues that the death of the high priest formed an atonement, as the death of pious individuals counted as an atonement, and in its view, the high priest was extremely pious;Maimonides argued that the death of the high priest was simply an event so upsetting to the Israelites that they dropped all thoughts of vengeance.

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