Old Testament

We’re drawing quite near the end of our study of this great Old Testament book. It’s an appropriate time to look back over it a bit in terms of the outline and see how far we have come and how we have yet to go. Joshua falls into four main parts.

Now, we stand at the very end of the third portion, after all the land has been divided up among the tribes. In addition, in chapters 20 and 21 we find a portion that deals with the establishing of certain special cities. There were 48 cities throughout Israel that were given to the priests, who came from the tribe of Levi. One category of these cities, the cities of refuge, we looked at last week. There were six of these cities, strategically spread out around the country, to which a person who had unintentionally killed another person could flee for refuge lest the avenger of blood should overtake him in accordance with the customs of that period.