Numbers 35:6-34

CITIES OF REFUGE, Numbers 35:6-34.

The right of shelter and impunity, ( jus asyli,) by fleeing to sacred places, was afforded to the guilty and the unfortunate by the ancient Greeks and Romans. When abuses arose and justice was grossly outraged, the limitation of this privilege was necessary to the preservation of society. Tacitus records the increase of criminals because of the increase of places of asylum among the Greeks and Romans. This merciful and wise provision of Mosaism, so far as the spirit of the age allowed it, prevented all family hatred and war from ever taking place, as was inevitably the case among the other nations, where any bloodshed whatever, whether wilful or accidental, laid the homicide open to the duty of revenge by the relatives of the slain person, who again in their turn were then similarly watched and hunted by the opposite party, until a family war of extermination was the sad heritage of succeeding generations.