[A Meditation on One Verse]

(Joshua 20:6) “He is to stay in that city until he has stood trial before the assembly and until the death of the high priest who is serving at that time. Then he may go back to his own home in the town from which he fled.”

When a life was lost, the motive was not important to the ‘avenger of blood.’ It was his natural right, like ‘an eye for an eye,’ to take revenge on the one who killed his family member. However, God broke this indiscriminate cycle of revenge and prepared a way of escape for the one who killed ‘accidentally.’ That was the ‘city of refuge,’ a place where God’s justice and loving-kindness meet.

However, through this institution, God opens our eyes to a deeper truth. Are we truly those who sin ‘accidentally’? No. For the sake of our own kingship, we are ‘intentional murderers’ who did not tolerate even God, and crucified Him.

It is at this point that the model of the city of refuge—for the ‘accidental’ slayer—is completed as an ‘unfathomable gospel’ for us, the ‘intentional’ rebels. The ‘death of the high priest’ shown in today’s verse 6 is the perfect picture of how the death of our eternal High Priest, Jesus Christ, atoned for the debt of our ‘intentional’ rebellion, once and for all.

Let’s think about it for a moment. Who would have eagerly welcomed the city of refuge? The one who was being pursued after killing someone unintentionally. Then who welcomes the cross? It is the one who realizes with their whole being that ‘I’ am the one who should be hanging on that cross. Only such a person can know the true meaning of the city of refuge and hope for the eternal home given through the death of the high priest.

[Prayer]

“Lord, let me know today that the city of refuge is my shelter, so that in that very place I may live as a worshiper who rejoices and delights in You.”
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(Daily Reading)

Joshua 20:1-21:3