Numbers 35:29-34

29 These things shall be for a statute [and] ordinance to you throughout your generations in all your dwellings.

30 Whoever kills any person, the murderer shall be slain at the mouth of witnesses: but one witness shall not testify against any person that he die.

31 Moreover you shall take no ransom for the life of a murderer who is guilty of death; but he shall surely be put to death.

32 You shall take no ransom for him who is fled to his city of refuge, that he may come again to dwell in the land, until the death of the Kohen.

33 So you shall not pollute the land in which you are: for blood, it pollutes the land; and no expiation can be made for the land for the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him who shed it.

34 You shall not defile the land which you inhabit, in the midst of which I dwell: for I, the LORD, dwell in the midst of the children of Yisra'el.

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.