Systematic Theology – Covenant

Cities of Refuge

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Systematic Theology

Lesson: 08-22

Genre: Speech

Track: 8 of 22

Dictation Name: 08 Cities of Refuge

Location/Venue:

Year:

Our subject now is Cities of Refuge. Cities of Refuge. Exodus 21:12-14.

“He that smiteth a man, so that he die, shall be surely put to death.

13 And if a man lie not in wait, but God deliver him into his hand; then I will appoint thee a place whither he shall flee.

14 But if a man come presumptuously upon his neighbour, to slay him with guile; thou shalt take him from mine altar, that he may die.”

Cities in the ancient world were very different from cities as we know them now. In the ancient world and until fairly recent times a city was a religious entity. All those within the city held to a common faith. Now you might wonder how this would be possible when there would be businessmen from different parts of the world who would be going and coming and some would settle there to do a business. There would be a separate section for them where they would govern in terms of their own religion and law. This is what we came to know as the ghetto. The ghetto, for example, in the Middle Ages could be a Jewish ghetto and the Jews ruled that area, chained the area at night so no strangers could come in. In Paris the English and the Germans, for example, would have their ghetto, an area where they applied their own law. The city thus was a religious unit, not a miscellaneous collection of people and the bible gives us the symbolism of the city as a religious entity when it speaks of Jerusalem as the city of God, the new Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven. And Jerusalem is a type of a church and then Babylon the great as a type of the world humanistic order. There was a time in this country notably in New England when the church was the center of the city because the city or the town had a religious character. Now of course the center of a city is a federal or city or county building, a symbol of statism and also of humanism.

The new religion of the city of course is humanism. Now the scripture we read which was one of a great number, for example, Numbers 35:6 and 35:9-34, Joshua 20:1-9, Deuteronomy 4:41-43 and many, many others speak of the cities of refuge. What were they? Well, in an accidental death a man had to be given refuge and protection. Supposing and the bible gives this example, of a man who was out working with others and the axe head flew off, hit a man and killed him. There might be relatives of that man who might feel very bitterly and might be dangerous, the city of refuge provided him a place where he could have a fair trial, not a local trial. Of course in such accidental deaths the responsibility was his to have provided safety, if he knew for example that the axe head was not secure or that it was liable to fly off, he was liable. But if for reasons totally unpredictable either through an axe head or any kind of equipment a death ensued the man had to have a place of refuge where he could have a fair trial. We have the same system today to a limited degree in that you could get a change of venue. Second these cities of refuge were Levitical cities, the Levites were tied to the covenant, they were the teachers of the covenant and they presented the covenant refuge and peace so it was the religious teachers and their cities, not the civil leaders, who provided the place of refuge. The cities of refuge were scattered throughout Israel, every one a Levitical city so there would be one for every district and the man could go immediately to that city and apply for refuge.

The trial then took place at the city of refuge, if he was acquitted then he was given the freedom of a city. If he were found to be guilty he was handed over to the avengers. Thus the covenant cities were both places of refuge and justice. This is an important fact. If you went to a city of refuge you went there because you were asking for judgment as well as grace. You went there because you wanted justice, anyone who was seeking to escape justice would fly to a foreign country, they certainly would not head to a city where a religious court would give you a different venue and sit in judgment on you. Now Paul refers to the cities of refuge in Hebrews 6:17-18. He says:

“Wherein God, willing more abundantly to shew unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath:

18 That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us:”

In other words Paul takes the entire legal fact of cities of refuge, an important legal fact, and reverses it in a sense. To say we have a city of refuge in Christ but the difference is that we can flee to Christ for refuge, as our city of refuge, when we are guilty. The guilty man did not go to the city of refuge, he headed for the border, to get out of the country and Paul says Christ is our city of refuge and we flee for refuge to lay ahold upon the hope set before us because in Him we have a kinsman redeemer, remember the kinsman redeemer and the city of refuge are linked. But there we go and we find the kinsman redeemer who says I pay the charges, I pay the death penalty, I give you freedom.

I restore you to your inheritance, guilty though you are. But remember to enter a city of refuge meant to ask for judgment and for grace. So that when we go to Christ as our city of refuge we are saying I am in need of judgment, I am guilty, I am here to be tried and to be found guilty but also to be freed because my kinsman redeemer pays all the accrued charges. Thus Christ and His cross are our city of refuge. Now there is an interesting fact about the cities of refuge in bible times. The bible does not mention this but we know it from all the ancient records. Every road leading to a city of refuge had to be kept in the best possible repair, straight and level. And if there were any crossroads en route there had to be signs clearly pointing to the city of refuge. But even then you scarcely needed the sign because the best road was obviously the one to the city of refuge. Because the city of refuge insured justice to a man who desperately needed it. And so it was to the advantage of everyone in Israel to make sure that the roads were kept clear, level and ready for use. Moreover through the centuries the church has been a city of refuge. Only recently has that more or less disappeared although during the demonstrations of the late sixties some of the war protesters led by I believe Father [unknown] tried to make one of the catholic churches a place of refuge. However their use of it was that there they would have the right to say and it would be wrong for the state to move in. But this was not of course the function of the church through the centuries as a place of refuge.

Just as when you went into a city of refuge you were immediately to present yourself to the court for trial and the court would set a trial date and then begin the collecting of evidences so too when the church functioned as a sanctuary and we still have that don’t we, that term sanctuary, we think of it as a place of worship but the term sanctuary carries over a meaning of a city of refuge. The person who went to a church said I do not believe that there is justice for me out there with the king’s men. I come here to apply for justice and it was the duty of the church to have a hearing as quickly as possible and to give him refuge as long as possible so they might have a hearing without any undue pressures. Now the meaning of the church as a sanctuary and the continuation of the biblical city of refuge is this: the church must provide both justice and grace, it must be the center of justice and grace in the world. But when a church becomes antinomian, when it loses interest in the law, when it doesn’t pay attention to the law of God how can it be a sanctuary? It has no sense of justice. All men in Israel had a stake in keeping the roads clear straight and level to the place of refuge because no one knew when they might need it. The church that is not a clear road to justice nor to grace will be bypassed by men and this is one of the sad facts of our time, that most churches have neither justice nor grace to offer. Are there any questions now? Yes?

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Well…

[Question] Can you comment on that?

[Rushdoony] Yes. Usually in the cases where a man sought a change of venue by fleeing to a city of refuge it would be an act where there might be, say, a great many people present, where there might be strong feelings, where he was an outsider and as a result there is only one thing he could do, and that was to run. I know that within the past ten years it was true that in some counties of California you could not get justice if you were from Los Angeles or from San Francisco, just depended. Now that’s not as bad here in the west as it is in some other parts of the country, we heard some friends say recently of the problem of someone who moved into another state into a small community, bought a beautiful old mansion, started to restore it, joined everything they could in the community, tried to be a part of the chamber of commerce but there wasn’t a person in the community who would talk to him outside of the organizations or work. He was a foreigner; he was from outside the state and that area.

What would happen to you if you wound up in court on something in a place like that, you see, we have problems like that in some areas, an outsider is an outsider and there is no justice for them. So what the bible is thinking about is justice and therefore it provided a city of refuge for such a person, a venue, get there quickly because if you wind up in that local jail you will have problems. Yes?

[Question] In the case of a person fleeing to a church did the church then set up a trial or investigate? And if they found him guilty would they then expel him or turn him over to the king’s men?

[Rushdoony] Yes. The church court, Presbyterians it would be a session, consistory, for others a board or a council or whatever depending upon the denomination, would invite anyone with charges to come and refer them and they would have a thorough hearing. It might take days and weeks but they would have a thorough hearing to determine whether or not this man was deserving of sanctuary. And if they felt he was not then they would turn him over. Now this was a sore point between the medieval lords and kings and the church because the kings didn’t agree with the church courts on this and the church did set up a variety of courts to deal with a variety of problems. It was one of the things that the modern state destroyed, we don’t realize but what developed out of the whole premise of the church as a city of refuge was a whole series of courts that dealt in terms of the Old Testament and New Testament with a variety of cases, there might be courts that dealt with family matters, others with criminal matters, but the church had a variety of courts that dealt with specialized things.

Well when you concentrated all cases in church courts what did you do? In state courts, rather, you centralized power there. You also limited justice. For one thing the court calendars are enormously clogged, for another the state courts increasingly ruled in terms of the state, over ninety percent of all the appeals at the U.S. Supreme Court hears are from some civil agency, not private persons and then it is criminals if it is private persons. So you and I have very little access to the Supreme Court on appeal, very little, even to the State Supreme Court. They function as a monopoly court. Now let me give you another example, it used to be that business men settled things through business courts, contracts were legally binding without being filed with the state and merchants associations adjudicated all contracts and increasingly the state has entered into that area. So we’ve seen just in the past twenty years a tremendous growth of civil court takeovers of jurisdiction. Think back on some of the absurd cases where for example the schools handled things like say the length of hair that a boy could have or the kind of clothing that they were to wear to school but the state courts entered into that. They destroyed the power of the public schools and their futures and they’ve done this in one area after another, they’re destroying the authority of the home, all these were all once independent law spheres and courts and what they decided was binding, anywhere and everywhere. No longer. So the fact that we’ve lost the idea of the church as a court and the city of refuge has been very important for the growth of totalitarianism. Yes?

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] As far back as we know an embassy was foreign soil and the country that had the embassy, its law prevailed on the embassy grounds. This is why when our Lord or rather Saint Paul speaks of us as being ambassadors of Christ and in the Greek speaks of the church and the Christian community as a [Unknown] from whence we get the word [unknown] but it meant a foreign enclave so that Paul was insisting that the church was not under Roman law, that it was an embassy and the ministers or the apostles ambassadors. Now that’s the whole premise of the conflict today. Now I’ve testified in courts on the meaning of the word [unknown] as it is used in the New Testament and other such things so the root idea of the embassy is very, very old and an embassy represents a foreign country originally it was a foreign faith and it had its own rule on its own grounds. Yes?

[Question] I’m not sure that I understood you correctly but the court that is in the city of refuge, is that a civil court or a church court or both?

[Rushdoony] It was in a sense both, it was a court held by the Levites but they were the rulers of the city of refuge.

[Question] If we were to follow that principle correctly today how would we, how would the city of refuge be organized and who would preside in the court? Obviously the civil government to some extent because if they were to find a man guilty of a capital crime as I understand it the church is not in a position to demand execution or set forth execution.

[Rushdoony] In such cases they were handed over to the civil authorities but you see I use the illustration of the schools governing dress and appearance and much more which they did once and had a discipline as a result. Now, that’s impossible when the state takes over, well, it is necessary for one spirit after another to fight, to reassert its right to govern its own sphere, its own domain. Certainly the church must do so above all else because God has ordained it to be a city of refuge which means it has to adjudicate in a number of cases. Well it can only do so as people go to these courts.

Now I think the time is ripe for that, I have on another occasion called attention to the fact that what we are seeing today is that groups of Christian lawyers have set up arbitration courts so that Christians in a conflict or a church against some members or whatever can go to such an arbitration court. Both sides must sign a statement, a contract stating they will abide by the decision of the court. Then there will be a hearing which could take weeks. A group of lawyers are appointed to be the court or commission. Their decision is binding. These cases are working out beautifully and you see the civil government is not in it at all except to this extent that a contract has been made out that will be binding in a civil court. So far and nobody and this has been under way for a few years now has stepped outside these courts, they’ve been satisfied with the decision. For one thing they get a decision very quickly whereas they’d had to wait for four to six years in most cities in a civil court and they’re not sure of what kind of justice they’ll get. Any other, yes?

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, one fact is that the civil courts are breaking down so you are going to see a return to this kind of thing. Yes?

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Very interesting, yes.

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Well that’s interesting because you see there are people who have said there must have been Jewish peoples who landed centuries and centuries ago in the islands and left their mark on them because the very name kahuna is practically the Hebrew kahana, kohen, the name, priest. There are so many things like that that are so obviously Old Testament in Hawaiian culture. Well if there aren’t…oh yes, let’s have our benediction and then I will set a date for the next meeting if you’ll wait a minute or two.

Our Lord and our God we thank Thee for all Thy blessings. We thank Thee for the certainty and the joy of Thy word. Give one and all now traveling mercies, a safe journey home and a blessed night’s rest and joy in Thy service day by day. In Jesus’ name, Amen.