2. give to the Levites . . . towns in which to settle. The Levites, it should be recalled, had no tribal territory, and so the other tribes are enjoined to apportion towns for them.

5. the eastern limit. Both the invocation of the four points of the compass and the use of the term “limit” (peʾah) recall the apportionment of the land in the preceding chapter. The juxtaposition—presumably, an editorial maneuver—is significant. The division of the land into tribal territories and clan holdings does not guarantee the creation of a stable, harmonious society. Provision must be made, as it is in these regulations for towns of asylum, for acts of violence of Israelite against Israelite, with protection for the manslayer when the act is not premeditated.

two thousand in cubits. The seeming contradiction with the just stipulated one thousand cubits is most simply resolved by assuming that the two thousand cubits are from perimeter to perimeter, with the breadth of the town itself (“the town in the middle”) excluded from the calculation. Rashi’s solution is that in fact an area extending two thousand cubits beyond the town walls is designated—an inner zone of one thousand cubits for pastureland and an outer zone of another thousand cubits for planted fields and vineyards.

7. forty-eight towns. The total number amounts to four towns per tribe, though the contribution of towns is to be implemented proportionately to the size of the tribe (verse 8).

11. set out. The use of the verbal stem q-r-h here is a little unusual because it generally indicates a chance event. Rashi proposes that the essential meaning of the verb is “to determine,” “to cause to happen” (leshon hazmanah).

murderer. The Hebrew rotseaḥ is used for both an intentional murderer and, as here, for someone who has committed manslaughter.

12. the avenger. The term goʾel is an abbreviated form of goʾel hadam, “blood avenger,” used elsewhere in this chapter. Blood vengeance was a form of vendetta justice executed by the family of the victim. The ritual motive beyond the simple thirst for vengeance was an archaic sense that blood wrongfully shed polluted the land, generated a kind of poisonous miasma, and had to be “redeemed” by shedding the blood of the murderer. (Compare Genesis 9:6: “He who sheds human blood / by humans his blood shall be shed.”) The laws here try to blend this older system of justice implemented by the family with a system in which justice is administered by courts. Thus, the “community” is given the responsibility for adjudicating between the accused person and the blood avenger by determining whether the accused has committed premeditated murder. If he has, capital punishment is then executed by the blood avenger, not the community.

14. Three towns . . . beyond the Jordan. It is odd that the division should be three on each side of the Jordan because nine and a half of the tribes reside to the west of the Jordan. Rashi’s suggestion that there was an unusually high homicide rate among the trans-Jordanian Gileadites seems fanciful. Perhaps three towns of asylum east of the Jordan made sense because this was the region of Israelite settlement farthest removed from the main centers of Israelite population, and thus a fugitive from vendetta justice was likely to feel more safely distanced there from the reach of the avengers.

15. for the sojourner and for the settler. Although “for” is repeated before each noun in the Hebrew, this is merely a variant form of the common hendiadys ger wetoshav, which means “resident alien.”

16. with an iron tool. As Jacob Milgrom reminds us, the historical setting for these laws was the early Iron Age, when iron may have been chiefly used for weapons. The prohibition in Exodus 20:25 against using iron tools in the construction of an altar reflects the same situation. If the fatal blow was delivered with a lethal implement, the presumption is that the killing was intentional.

17. a hand stone. The translation literally reproduces the gnomic expression of the Hebrew. The obvious meaning is a sizable stone that can be grasped in the hand and used as a weapon.

18. Or with a wooden hand tool. There appears to be a progressive extension of the principle of lethal implement through these three instances. The iron tool is designed as a weapon. The stone is an improvised weapon. The wooden hand tool—say, a wooden mallet—is an implement meant for another purpose that has been appropriated as a weapon.

19. when he comes upon him. The verb p-g-ʿ indicates an encounter between two parties (or two material substances), but there may be a pun here because the verb also means “to stab” (the sharp encounter of iron with flesh).

22. But if on an impulse. Or “suddenly,” which is to say, the perpetrator of the act himself did not foresee or plan it.

23. with any stone by which one may die. This stipulation recognizes that the previously mentioned nature of the instrument of killing is not sufficient proof of premeditation: a person could, for example, carelessly throw a “hand stone” out a window, not realizing that someone was standing below.

26. if the murderer should indeed go out beyond the border of his town of asylum. There is a link between the notion of levitical towns of asylum and the extension of protective sanctuary at the altar to manslayers and other accused criminals. Baruch Levine suggests that once the cult was centralized in Jerusalem, the levitical towns assumed the function of asylum previously associated with local sanctuaries. In Mesopotamia there were analogous towns of asylum, and Moshe Weinfeld notes that the Egyptians had zones of asylum, supervised by priests, which may shed light on the linking of the duration of asylum here with the life span of the high priest.

30. by witnesses. For capital crimes, at least two witnesses were necessary to convict the accused.

shall the murderer be murdered. The verb ratsaḥ reaches its longest semantic stretch here when it is used in the sense of “execute”—probably in order to underline the notion of measure-for-measure justice. In verse 25 it is used to designate an involuntary manslayer.

32. ransom in lieu of flight. The Hebrew says literally, “ransom to flee.” Ransom thus is equally prohibited as a substitute for the capital punishment of a murderer and as a substitute for a manslayer’s settling in a town of asylum, which would be a form of exile within the borders of the country (as in the sentence of internal exile to a remote region in the Czarist system of justice).