Numbers 35:9

"And Jehovah spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye pass over the Jordan into the land of Canaan, then shall ye appoint you cities to be cities of refuge for you, that the manslayer that killeth any person unwittingly may flee thither. And the cities shall be unto you for refuge from the avenger, that the manslayer die not, until he stand before the congregation for judgment. And the cities which ye shall give shall be for you six cities of refuge. Ye shall give three cities beyond the Jordan, and three cities shall ye give in the land of Canaan; they shall be cities of refuge. For the children of Israel, and for the stranger and for the sojourner among them, shall these six cities be for refuge; for every one that killeth any person unwittingly may flee thither."

The conception of a place for persons in jeopardy for manslaughter or other crimes was widely received throughout the East during the times of the exodus. The temple of Diana at Ephesus proclaimed "a sanctuary" for a quarter of a mile in all directions from the temple, with the result that the greatest concentration of violent criminals on earth dwelt in the very shadow of the pagan temple. Joab, it will be remembered, sought sanctuary at the altar of God, but God's people did not honor such "sanctuaries." This institution of the cities of refuge was a far different thing from the heathen sanctuaries where the guilty were protected. These cities of refuge merely protected the refugee from the avenger until his case could be heard before his own congregation, and all turned upon their decision. If they declared him really to have committed unintentional manslaughter, he was confined to the area of the city of refuge until the death of the high priest, and if they declared him guilty of murder, he was given over to the vengeance of the avenger of blood. As Keil said, "These cities of refuge were never intended to save the criminal from any punishment that he deserved, but were simply established for the purpose of securing a just sentence, whereas, the pagan sanctuaries actually answered the purpose of rescuing the criminal from the punishment that he legally deserved."[9]

The Hebrew word from which we get "Avenger of Blood" is actually [~go'el],[10] the near-kinsman, or next of kin to the victim. He was a very important person in the customs and traditions of the Near East, even down to the present times. He had a number of functions, but one of the principal things was his duty of "settling" the debt caused by the death of his relative, which in the normal run of things meant killing the manslayer. Gray listed some of the duties of the [~go'el] as follows: "to contract a Levirate marriage, collect debts owed to the deceased, to buy a kinsman out of slavery into which poverty had compelled him to sell himself, and to buy property to keep it from passing out of his family ..."[11]

"Until he stand before the congregation ..." (Numbers 35:12). Carson thought this might refer either to the congregation in the city of refuge, or to the refugee's own congregation,[12] but most of the older commentators thought it meant the man's home assembly, at which location all the facts would be much more available.[13] "This took place in the city or the place where he had done the killing."[14] Recent Jewish scholars agree: "The congregation was of the community within whose boundaries the slaying occurred."[15]