Numbers 35:29-34

29 These [instructions] will be a statutory ordinance for you throughout your generations wherever you live.

30 "If anyone kills a person, the murderer is to be put to death based on the word of witnesses. But no one is to be put to death based on the testimony of one witness.^[a]

31 You are not to accept a ransom for the life of a murderer who is guilty of killing someone; he must be put to death.

32 Neither should you accept a ransom for the person who flees to his city of refuge, allowing him to return and live in the land before the death of the [high] priest.^[b]

33 "Do not defile the land where you are,^[c] for bloodshed defiles the land,^[d] and there can be no atonement for the land because of the blood that is shed on it, except by the blood of the person who shed it.

34 Do not make the land unclean where you live and where I reside; for I, the Lord, reside among the Israelites."

Numbers 35:29-34 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO NUMBERS 35

Though the tribe of Levi had no part in the division of the land, yet cities out of the several tribes are here ordered to be given them to dwell in, to the number of forty eight, Nu 35:1-8, six of which were to be cities of refuge, Nu 35:9-15, but not for wilful murderers, in whatsoever way they might kill a man, Nu 35:16-21, but for such who had killed a man unawares, Nu 35:22-24, and several rules are given relating to such persons, Nu 35:25-29, but no satisfaction was to be taken in case of murder, nor to excuse a person's return to his own house before the death of the high priest, who had fled to a city of refuge, that so the land might not be defiled, Nu 35:30-34.

Footnotes

• [a] Dt 17:6; 19:15; Mt 18:16
• [b] Sam, LXX, Syr read high priest
• [c] Sam, LXX, Syr, Vg, Tg read live
• [d] Ps 106:38; Isa 24:5; Jr 3:9