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Life's Labors Lost: Priestly Death and Returning Home From a City of Refuge in Ancient Israel
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 July 2018
Abstract
According to Numbers 35:9–34, someone who had killed an innocent person intentionally was to be killed by an avenger of blood. However, someone who had killed an innocent person inadvertently was allowed to take up residence in a city of refuge where he (the legislation appears to be focused on males) would be shielded from being killed by this avenger. After the death of the high priest, the inadvertent killer could leave the city and return home safely.
This paper analyzes the six most common and substantial explanations for why an inadvertent killer could leave a city of refuge and return home after the death of the high priest, and shows why they cannot be correct. Another explanation is then offered, the basic elements of which are as follows.
An inadvertent killer was confined to a city of refuge in order to equalize the circumstances of the killer and his family/kin group with the circumstances of the victim and his family/kin group: specifically, the confinement of the killer in a city of refuge removed his presence and labor from his family/kin group just as the death of the victim had removed his presence and labor from his family/kin group. The legists behind Numbers 35:9–34, however, deemed it right and fair to limit the duration of that equalization to what the victim and his family/kin group had actually lost: the unfulfilled balance of the victim's natural lifespan. Since there was no way to know when the victim's natural lifespan would actually have come to an end, the legists availed themselves of the high priest's representational function, and used his death to represent when the natural death of the victim would have taken place. An inadvertent killer was, therefore, released from confinement after the high priest died, and his circumstances were normalized.
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References
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33 On the representative function of the anointed priest, see Schwartz, Baruch J., “Leviticus: Introduction and Annotations,” in The Jewish Study Bible (ed. Berlin, Adele and Brettler, Marc Zvi; 2nd ed.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014) 202Google Scholar; Hoffmann, David, Das Buch Leviticus (2 vols.; Berlin, M. Poppelauer, 1905) 1:176–77Google Scholar; Rooke, Zadok's Heirs, 22–23; Kleinig, Leviticus, 338; Hartley, Leviticus, 59; Rendtorff, Leviticus 1,1–10,20, 152–54; Gorman, The Ideology of Ritual, 71, 91–102; Watts, Leviticus 1–10, 330–31. Regarding the representational/expiatory activities of the high priest, in the expiation explanation, the high priest functioned as an object which died in place of the killer, and/or which carried the bloodguilt/impurity of the killing away with it when it died. Israelite priests, however, only ever functioned as subjects, who facilitated, managed, and acted in ritual processes which benefited offerers by carrying sin/impurity away (see section II.A, fourth point); this is how the high priest is understood to function here.
34 If an inadvertent killer residing in a city of refuge died before the high priest died, this would simply have indicated that the inadvertent killer's natural lifespan had ended before the victim's natural lifespan would have ended.
35 It might be argued that a victim's kin group/avenger might not have believed or accepted the idea that the portion of the victim's natural life which had been lost was only one day (or some other short duration). It is assumed here, however, that the kin group/avenger would have understood that life was fragile, and that death, natural or otherwise, could happen at any time (see, e.g., Num 6:9; 2 Kgs 4:17–20). After all, they had not expected the victim to die on the day he actually did.