This is where these cities of refuge came in. God appointed in the law that these six cities should be set up throughout the land, equally spaced, so whenever anything like this happened, a person who had unintentionally and accidentally killed another person would have a place to flee to. As soon as the accident happened, this man would get to one of these cities as fast as he could and upon arrival, stand in the gate. He was to present his case to the elders of the city, who were the Levitical priests, and explain what had happened. It says explicitly in these texts that if his case is just, they were to hear it. It was not a device by which a murderer could escape justice; but if his cause was just, if this really was an accidental killing, then they were not to turn him away.
This is where these cities of refuge came in. God appointed in the law that these six cities should be set up throughout the land, equally spaced, so whenever anything like this happened, a person who had unintentionally and accidentally killed another person would have a place to flee to. As soon as the accident happened, this man would get to one of these cities as fast as he could and upon arrival, stand in the gate. He was to present his case to the elders of the city, who were the Levitical priests, and explain what had happened. It says explicitly in these texts that if his case is just, they were to hear it. It was not a device by which a murderer could escape justice; but if his cause was just, if this really was an accidental killing, then they were not to turn him away.
And yet, there were special cities even among all these other cities. They’re described in Joshua 20 and 21. Chapter 21 tells about the towns that were given to the Levites. The Levites, the priests, didn’t have any land of their own; they were not given a tribal territory. Instead, God scattered the priests throughout Israel as a blessing to the whole people. And they were given these priestly cities in which they lived. There were 48 of them, and chapter 21 lists them. And then at the very end, there’s a summation, which says, “The towns of the Levites and the territory held by the Israelites were 48 in all, together with their pasture lands.”
There’s a great contrast here in this story, and I’m sure it’s why it’s told at this point, right in the middle of this account of the division of the land. It’s the contrast between Caleb, who followed the Lord wholeheartedly to the very end and took the land that he’d been promised so many years before, and the people who, for the most part, failed to fully possess these possessions. Oh, they had the land. They were there. The power of the Canaanites was broken during the seven years of military conquest. All of the great cities had been overthrown. But when the land was divided up, they were to go into their individual portions of the land, subdue it, and drive the inhabitants out. And we’re told again and again in these chapters that they didn’t quite do it. They settled down, and instead enjoyed the conquest without carrying it through to completion.
The second thing that we see in Joshua 14 comes out in this word, “wholeheartedly,” which is repeated there three times (vv. 8, 9, 14). That’s the same idea that is involved in Deuteronomy 6:5, which Jesus quoted when He was asked what was the first and greatest of all the commandments. He said, “It’s that you love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind.” Because Caleb loved the Lord his God with all his heart, he served him with all his heart. And he did it through a long, long lifetime. And here at the end, he’s still doing it.
Now it’s worth asking at this point what the secret of this man’s greatness was. In fact, it was no great secret. Caleb had total faith in God, and he gave himself to God utterly. It’s not hard to see his faith. That comes out very simply in this matter of the spies’ initial report.
Now when Numbers 13 begins to tell us about the work of the spies, it doesn’t give us very much detail as to how they went about their work. We don’t know, for example, whether they toured around in a body or whether they divided up. We might suspect that they divided up so as not to attract too much attention. One thing I suspect as I read about this is that whether they divided up or whether they went around as a group, Caleb must have expressed some particular interest in Hebron. Hebron is the only one of the cities of the land that’s described in any detail in Numbers 13.
The magnificent old man to which I am referring here in Joshua 14 is Caleb, who was Joshua’s companion and fellow soldier during all these long years of the conquest of Canaan. It’s often the case that in the presence of an outstanding leader, other people are overlooked. And it’s not because the other people are not great in themselves. Sometimes they’re even greater in some ways than the leader who’s getting all the attention. But, for one reason or another, perhaps just because he or she has a position of visibility, the leader gets the attention, and the other people are overshadowed.
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