Commentaria in Numeros
Note: These cities of refuge were granted as an asylum, first, to be the aid and protection of innocence and of the innocent; secondly, to show how seriously God would have homicide, especially voluntary, inquired into and punished; thirdly, to take away from the kinsmen of the slain the matter of anger, grief and vengeance (for the Jews were stubborn in mind and very desirous of revenge); fourthly, to remove the occasion of fresh quarrels and slaughters; fifthly, that in the shelter of refuge there might be a type and figure of penance. In like manner in the new law, asylums for the guilty are all churches, cemeteries, monasteries, religious and ecclesiastical houses. Wherefore there are more asylums among Christians than there were among the Jews. Again, the Jews had asylum only for involuntary homicides, because other sins are committed almost voluntarily and of set purpose, and therefore God willed that these should not go unpunished; but Christians have asylum in almost every crime and danger. I say almost; for the chapter Inter alia, title De Immunitate Ecclesiae, denies asylum to nocturnal ravagers of fields, public robbers, and besetters of the roads. Likewise the right of asylum is not had by ravishers of virgins, traitors, sacrilegious, blasphemers, heretics, apostates, Jews, and as many as commit crimes in the asylums themselves, as Covarruvias and others teach. See Suarez, treatise De Immunitate Ecclesiae, chapters ix and x. Gregory XIV, however, the Pontiff, by a new constitution reduced these to one form only, which denies the right of asylum to lay public robbers, highwaymen, ravagers of fields, those who commit homicides or mutilations in a church or cemetery, those who kill their neighbour treacherously, assassins, heretics, and those guilty of treason. This bull is extant, published at Antwerp with the Synod of Antwerp. Thirdly, from the city of refuge the Jews [were led out, that their cause might be] debated; and if they were found to have killed voluntarily, and therefore to have no right of asylum, they were punished with death. But now neither judge nor anyone else can drag a Christian accused from the asylum. Fourthly, the Jews had asylums by divine right, as prescribed by God. But this was a judicial and ceremonial right, and therefore is now abolished. Christians have asylums by human right, because, namely, Pontiffs and Kings or Emperors established them and their right: whence in some places they have enlarged it, in others restricted it. The cause of asylums was reverence of temples and sacred places, and of God himself. For while houses of God are held sacrosanct, and asylums, his glory and majesty [are honoured]. Secondly, his mercy and kindness are commended, while he receives miserable culprits fleeing to him into his protection. So the Gentile Greeks established “an altar of mercy,” as Pausanias attests, book I in the Attica. So Romulus established an asylum at Rome, as St. Augustine attests, book I On the City of God, chapter xxxiv, but for all, even the most wicked men. So Alaric and the Goths, Rome being taken, spared the Romans fleeing to the churches; nay, when a certain Goth had found sacred vessels with a consecrated virgin, and she said to him: “These vessels have been committed to me from the sacristy of blessed Peter; touch them if you dare; I dare not give you sacred things,” the Goth, terrified at the name of the Apostle, reported this to the king; he at once caused all to be carried back to the sacristy of St. Peter, saying “that he was waging war with the Romans, not with the Apostles of Jesus Christ.” So Roderic of Toledo, book II On Spanish Affairs, chapter v.
Memorable was Agesilaus, who forbade the Athenians, conquered in battle and fleeing to the temple of Minerva, to be violated; although in that battle he himself had received several wounds, and seemed very angry with them. But religion prevailed with him more than anger. The same he did among the Barbarians, saying that there is no law of war in temples; and he added that he wondered that those were not held sacrilegious who hurt suppliants there, and who adjured by the gods, and that no heavier penalties were taken from those who diminished religion than from those who plundered temples. Rightly judging that the safety of men is dearer to the gods than the dumb ornaments of temples. So Aemilius Probus.
17. IF HE THROW A STONE, AND HE THAT IS STRUCK DIE, HE SHALL BE PUNISHED IN LIKE MANNER,—if, namely, the one struck with the stone expired at once; for if he had risen from the blow, or walked, the striker, or rather the thrower, was not put to death, but only paid the expenses of the cure to the injured man, as is plain from Exodus xxi, 19.
19. THE KINSMAN OF HIM THAT WAS SLAIN SHALL KILL THE MURDERER,—that is, may kill. For this is not a precept but only a permission made to hard men, and that to restrain slaughters, since all knew that they would at once be avenged with bitter mind by so many kinsmen. Yet the slayers sinned in killing the homicide, if they did it from hatred and anger, as commonly happens. Whence Leviticus xix, 17, in the forum of the soul and of conscience God commands the Hebrews to forget injuries. The vengeance, then, which is here permitted did not take away the guilt, but only gave impunity to the deed, or the fault, in the external forum. This again is plain from this, that these kinsmen of the slain often killed an innocent and wholly involuntary homicide, nay one acquitted by the judge, if, namely, they found him outside the city of asylum anywhere, as is plain from verse 27: but this could not be done without sin. Thirdly, the same is plain from this, that these precepts are judicial, which establish a law to be observed, and according to which judgment will be pronounced in the external forum. So Abulensis and Cajetan.
It is permitted here, therefore, to the kinsmen of the slain to kill the homicide wherever they find him outside the cities of asylum. For in the asylum they could not touch the homicide: there the judges had to afford him security until his cause was debated; in which if he were condemned, the kinsmen could kill him, and, as is here intimated, the homicide was delivered by the judge to the kinsmen and relatives of the slain, to be put to death by them, and this to satisfy their anger and offence: but if he were declared innocent, he was safely led back to the asylum, and there had to remain until the death of the pontiff. So Abulensis.
22. BUT IF BY CHANCE MEDLEY.—The Hebrew is pitom, that is suddenly, unexpectedly, which is by chance.
Verse 25. HE SHALL BE BROUGHT BACK (the homicide who killed another by chance, and has now been declared innocent by the judge) BY THE SENTENCE INTO THE CITY TO WHICH HE HAD FLED.—“He shall be brought back,” that is, the judge by his sentence shall order him to be brought back either from the city and place in which he committed the homicide—for there his cause seems to have been examined, because there the witnesses and other greater indications of the truth were at hand, as Abulensis holds, and the word “brought back” intimates it—or surely from the very gate of the city of refuge he will command him to be brought back into the city itself. For that in this gate, namely among the Levites, where religion and justice were more holy, this judgment on the quality of the homicide was held, Masius and Serarius on Josue 20, and others, think. Either opinion and exposition is probable. AND HE SHALL DWELL THERE UNTIL THE HIGH PRIEST (the pontiff) DIE.—You will ask why? The Rabbis give various causes, which Serarius recounts on chapter 20 of Josue, Question 5, which omitting I say: The first cause was that meanwhile, by length of time, the anger and bitterness of the kinsmen might be mitigated, lest, when they should see him, they kill by such a deed, which has been perpetrated while he discharged the priesthood for God the Most High: so Magalianus above, and Masius on Josue chapter xx. The fourth, this was granted as a favour to the new pontiff, who succeeded the dead one, that as he approaches to propitiate God for men as a new man, so also he may bestow a new benefit and safety on wretched culprits who seem more worthy of it. The fifth, “God willed,” says Oleaster, “to show how much a priest ought to abhor homicides, even involuntary. Again, the pontiff was the vicar of God, and played the part of divine justice, by which God demands vengeance from men; and he being dead, the adverse party seemed extinguished which sought revenge for God, and therefore then the culprit was wholly absolved.” The sixth and chief cause was that there might be signified the true freedom which by the death of the pontiff Christ has been won for homicides, that is, for all sinners. So Serarius. Whence:
Allegorically, Cyril, book VIII On Adoration, p. 105: The homicide, he says, was the human race, and men sinners before the coming of Christ, who by sins had killed their own souls, not willingly, but enticed and driven by concupiscence. These, penitent, fled and hid themselves in the cities of refuge, that is, in the limbo of the fathers, until the death of the pontiff, that is of Christ, who loosed their bonds, and led them out from limbo and hell. So also St. Gregory, homily 6 on Ezechiel.
27. THE REVENGER OF BLOOD,—that is, the kinsman by blood, to whom vengeance belongs.
HE SHALL BE WITHOUT GUILT,—he shall not be punished. In Hebrew, there shall be no blood to him, namely it shall not be imputed, so that he should pay his own for it.
30. THE MURDERER SHALL BE PUNISHED BY WITNESSES (in Hebrew, at the mouth of witnesses, namely of several, not of one).
Verse 31. You shall not take a price for the life of the homicide, who is guilty of death. It appears from this place that among the Israelites, even before the times of Moses, the custom prevailed of redeeming life with silver from the Goel. Among the Arabs the authority of Mahomet confirmed that custom and turned it into law (Sur. iii, 178, 174). But Moses abrogates this custom. And indeed it was the part of a prudent legislator to forbid a base and abject custom; for it concerns, says Allioli on this place, not the family only, but the commonwealth also, that homicides be punished, and that the judge serve not the grief of the kinsmen rather than set forth an example of punishments by which the wicked may be terrified and the good may live in safety. And even today among the Thehamanene Arabs it is disgraceful to redeem life with silver from the Goel, as Niebuhr attests, in his Description of Arabia, p. 33.