Any of the Israelites or any foreigner residing among them who killed someone accidentally could flee to these designated cities and not be killed by the avenger of blood prior to standing trial before the assembly. – Joshua 20:9

Today's Scripture Reading (April 11, 2025): Joshua 20

Life is sacred, all of it. No one is beneath notice or less important; life should come with a sense of equality.  Christian missions are built on that one idea. No matter where you are and regardless of what you believe, you are valuable. Some oppose even the idea of capital punishment on the single idea that all life is sacred and irreplaceable.

Israel had capital punishment in their law. To be fair, we need to recognize that all societies did. Capital punishment was often class-based in the neighboring nations of that time. So, the rich were seldom executed, but the poor had a higher incidence of execution. The value of life had a lot to do with the class you held within the culture. Nothing seems to have changed in our contemporary areas where capital punishment is used as a deterrence to crime.

And this is where Israel was different. Class didn't matter. In opposition to the common thought of the time, even citizenship didn't matter. All life was equal and sacred. However, the family of the person murdered often carried out capital punishment and not the State. So, the question that arises is what happens if the killing is accidental. So, God provided for cities of refuge that people could run to and in which they could live, a place where capital punishment couldn't be carried out, at least not until a judge had decided the culpability of the perpetrator.

Sometimes, what we miss when we read passages like this is that the cities of refuge were in themselves a jail. If you killed someone accidentally, you couldn't be executed in a city of refuge.

However, all life was still sacred, so there was still a price to be paid. This meant that while your life was safe, it was only secure as long as you stayed within the city, 

I read a book recently (okay, it was "Plague Ship" by Clive Cussler), and in Cussler's fictional story, at one point, the characters had to put on a hazmat suit. The instructions they were given were that they needed to move carefully and preplan their moves. If you tear the suit because you failed to think ahead, you are in trouble and have no one to blame but yourself. Clive Cussler was actually giving great advice for life. All life is sacred, so preplan your moves carefully because even if you don't kill someone, you don't want to tear relationships throughout your life, even accidentally. Capital punishment may not be the consequence of torn relationships, but there is a penalty to be paid for all of our sins.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Joshua 21

Originally Published on July 23, 2010

Personal Note: Happy Birthday to my sister, Cheri.