1. the towns of asylum about which I spoke to you through Moses. The laws for the town of asylum are laid out in Numbers 35 and restated, in somewhat different terms, in Deuteronomy 19. Although the literary formulation of the laws here was probably done two or three centuries after the founding of the monarchy, the laws themselves reflect the tribal period when there was no centralized judicial authority, and vendetta justice prevailed in cases of murder or manslaughter.

3. a murderer. The Hebrew rotseaḥ, which generally means “murderer,” also encompasses “manslayer,” as in the present context. Perhaps it is used to stress the gravity of destroying a life, even unintentionally.

in errance, without intending. This duplication of language brings together the term used in Numbers with the one used in Deuteronomy.

blood avenger. The literal sense of this designation is “blood redeemer.” That idiom reflects an archaic notion that when the blood of one’s kin is shed, it has been lost to—or perhaps drained away from—the family, and it must be “redeemed” by shedding the blood of the killer.

6. until he stands before the community in judgment, until the death of the high priest. These look suspiciously like contradictory terms. The fugitive has already received what amounts to a verdict of innocent when the elders accept his plea in the gateway of the town (the place of judgment). If a general amnesty obtains after the death of the high priest, why does the fugitive have to stand trial a second time? It is possible that the writer responsible for this passage was uneasy with the idea of a blanket exculpation at the time of the death of the high priest and wanted to emphasize that the fugitive’s innocence had to be determined by judicial proceedings.

and to the town from which he had fled. This phrase seems redundant after “to his town.” Perhaps one should drop the “and” and read it as an explanatory apposition, “to his town. . . . to the town from which he has fled.”

9. to flee there, anyone striking down a person in errance, that he not die by the hand of the blood avenger. This phraseology repeats the language of the beginning of this section in an envelope structure.

until he stand before the community. He stands before the community to be judged, as verse 6 makes explicit. Here at the end, no mention is made of the death of the high priest, perhaps because the writer wanted to emphasize judicial proceedings, not amnesty.