Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - What's a City of Refuge? | Historical Books | Joshua 20

Episode Date: January 30, 2025

Everyone wants a just society. But how do you know what's just? In today's episode, Patrick explains the purpose of cities of refuge from Joshua 20, reminding us that God seeks justice for his image bearers. Read the Bible with us in 2025! This year, we’re exploring the Historical Books—Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, and 1 & 2 Kings. Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Joshua 20

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. You'd be hard-pressed to find someone who'd say, I don't want to live in a just society. Of course, there are sociopaths and narcissists out there who might think or at least act otherwise, but the majority of us agree. Justice is a good thing. I think that disagreement comes when we try to answer the question, what is a just society?

and what is justice after all? Take a hairy topic like immigration. Is it just to have national borders? Is it just to punish those who break those laws? And what if they have a good reason to break those laws? And if we agree that it's just to punish those who break the law, well, what's a just punishment after all? I hope you see how fraught the question of justice is, because it's not merely a question of what's right and what's wrong, but also a question of what's the proper response to wrongness. For example, in many ancient society's theft was punishable by death. Now that might sound a bit barbaric to us, but imagine that you're a peasant living in medieval England and someone steals your steer. Well, that steer is necessary for you to farm and if you can't farm, you might go hungry. Your children might die

of malnutrition. So if theft could cost a life, then is it wrong to take a life when someone steals? One of the most fascinating parts of reading Old Testament laws is that those laws weren't created in a vacuum. Every society had a vision of justice, and it applied that vision of justice into written codes. And so when we read the Old Testament laws, it's often helpful to explore where they agree with the world around them and where they disagree, because again, they weren't written in a vacuum. These laws are often commentating on the laws of the cultures around Israel. But I think that these laws are also fascinating because of the cultural milieu, the time in which they were written. What seems to us like a law that's too merciful or lenient might seem like common sense to them because of their context. What seems barbaric to us might also seem like common sense to them.

For example, they lived in a subsistence economy. That's an economy where basically everyone lives hand to mouth and most people go hungry about 60 days a year. And moreover, in their culture, there were no formal courts. Instead, towns and villages had elders and these elders tried the cases. at the city gate. And this, by the way, was well before the time people could do forensic detective work. And that meant that many of the decisions that had to be made, well, they were based on testimonies and limited evidence. So naturally, the character and credibility of the person testifying, well, that mattered tremendously back then. So think about it like this. If you were known

to be a liar and the elders didn't trust you and your testimony was up against an upright man who was known for speaking the truth, who do you think the elders would believe. Another major difference between our culture and their culture was the lack of prisons. In many ways, this actually makes their culture seem much more enlightened. People weren't locked up for decades because no one could be held responsible to feed and house and watch over so many prisoners. This is one reason why they and their culture often opted for immediate justice. That could come in the form of fines or even corporal justice using the death sentence or other physical means to punish and deter wrongdoing. And the Old Testament law, it understood that

the world is complicated. Things happen that no one expects. For example, it's clear that the Sixth Commandment condemns murder. This doesn't mean that it's always wrong to kill. For example, killing was condoned in just warfare. It was also condoned in the death penalty for murder. But what do you do in the in-between cases? What do you do when someone commits what we today would call manslaughter and accidental killing. Again, this is a really complex question because sometimes manslaughter happens by accident. Imagine someone getting into a car accident and killing someone. Well, that could be totally accidental. But other times, unintentional killing, it happens by negligence. Again, you can imagine a drunk driver killing someone. That's different, isn't it? Or you can imagine

a company refusing to give its employees valuable safety equipment. Then someone dies as a result. Well, those are all accidents, but they're very different kinds. of accidents, and they're different than a bad car accident that has no drunkenness. And we can push this one step further to highlight the fact that these laws show us that motive really matters. Did I mean to kill you? And that the cause matters. Was your death due to my own negligence, or was it truly a unpredictable accident? In most ancient Near Eastern law codes, these differences were hardly acknowledged. If someone killed someone else on purpose or by accident or by negligence, well it was all met with the same penalty, death.

But Israel was incredibly unique in its cultural context. You see, it had a vision of justice that was saturated with the wisdom of God. And its vision of justice understands that every single human is made in the image of God. And that means every death is terrible and wrong in its own way. And it's precisely because God values individual life so much that he demanded caution before killing someone who killed someone else. For example, murder charges needed to be confirmed by two or more witnesses, because killing someone based on one witness's testimony was possibly taking their life too lightly. And when it came to accidental deaths, the policy was even more nuanced.

On the one hand, it allowed exactly what Israel's neighbors would have expected. If someone accidentally killed someone else, then someone from the deceased family could seek out vengeance. They could seek to kill that person. This person is called an Avenger of Blood. And by allowing Avengers of Blood, the Old Testament law highlights that the accidental death of someone, even if it's accidental, it does demand a sort of recompense because that person's life was so valuable. But it also understands that the person who did the killing accidentally, well, that person is also made in the image of God. And so his life is no light matter either.

And this is why the law of Israel introduced a new legal system. And this legal system has no analog in the ancient Near East. You see, it's only in Israel that justice is valued so highly that they created a way for an accidental murderer or, say, an accidental killer to escape from the avenger of blood. The offender can flee his own city and run to one of six cities of refuge. In Joshua 20, today's passage, Joshua establishes which cities will be the cities of refuge for the person who commits manslaughter. And he explains how it works. We'll pick it up in verse two. Tell the Israelites to designate the cities of refuge, as I instructed you through Moses,

so that anyone who kills a person accidentally and unintentionally may flee there and find protection from the Avenger of Blood. When they flee to one of these cities, they are to stand at the entrance of the city gate, remember that was kind of like the ancient law court, and state their case before the elders of that city. Then the elders are to admit the fugitive into their city and provide a place to live among them. If the Avenger of Blood comes in pursuit, the elders must not surrender the fugitive, because the fugitive killed their neighbor unintentionally and without malice or forethought. They are to stay in that city until they have stood trial before the assembly and until the death of the high priest who is serving at that time. Then they may go back to their home,

in the town from which they fled. Do you see how careful this system is? While anyone can go and seek refuge. If they do so, they have to prove their case. And this is so that the cities of refuge don't become dens of injustice, housing murderers pretending that it was an accident. But it also exacts a cost from the person who committed manslaughter, even though it was an accident. This is punitive justice. The idea that all wrongdoing, even accidental wrongdoing, should be punished in some fashion. And in this case, the cost for the person who accidentally kills someone else, well, it's a pretty steep cost. They have to live far away from their home until the high priest dies. That could be a year, that could be decades. But here's the key. That person who killed someone else accidentally, they get to live. That person who was made in the

image of God is honored and respected, even as an accidental wrong against an image bearer is punished and appeased. Now, I know that this is kind of a strange episode, and if you're a history nerd or something you love all of this philosophy and history and talk about justice. But if you're not and you haven't tuned out at this point, you're probably wondering, what does all this mean for me? Well, let me put it simply. God cares about the fine, granular details of justice. And so should you. If you live a comfortable life in a suburb, I do, you may not face injustice every day. You may rarely face it, but other people do. Sometimes injustice is done by citizens. to citizens. Sometimes injustice is done by governments to its citizens. This could be the federal or state

government or officials like police officers or toll booth operators. The reality is we live in a world where injustice happens. This means that as Christians, we don't get to sit aloof to the questions of justice in our society. Why? Because our society is made up of image bears. People made in the image of God whom he loves and whom he desires to experience justice in their lives. We worship a God of justice. That is a fact. And so we ought to be like those in the city of refuge, who protect those whom God calls us to protect, and to seek justice for those who are harmed.