Day 69—  Now that we’ve passed Day 66, it’s 100% likely that we have established a “habit.” So CELEBRATE our habit of daily Bible reading! We are in the THIRD month so far! Praise God!

   Day 69 – Numbers 35 – 36 (Provisions for Levites, manslayers, young women)

God does not forget about the Levites and their material possessions. In Chapter 35, He tells Moses to assign 48 cities with some pastureland around them – within the Promised (and Bonus) Land – for the Levites to live and care for the animals & equipment they have. They are evenly distributed throughout small & large tribes.

Six of these cities – evenly spaced in the land – were to be Cities of Refuge, safe places for a person who accidently killed someone to run to and have safety from the diseased person’s Avenger (nearest male relative). The manslayer would need to live within the city from then on.  If he stepped outside, the Avenger could legally kill him.  He had to stay there until the High Priest died, a sort of atonement for the killed one. These were not prisons, more like a “witness-protection” locations today.

But God also makes it clear, that if a person intentionally, pre-meditatively, kills someone, his life would be required of him from the family Avenger. He could NOT seek a City of Refuge.

Chapter 36 revisits the case of women survivors in a man’s family, perhaps losing their inheritance in the Promised Land by marrying outside the tribe.  The problem was solved when Moses commanded the women in these cases to marry withing their tribe.  No inheritance could be transferred from one tribe to another.

These two last-minute situations (murder and marriage) were solved while the people were still camped on the plains of the conquered Moab, East of the Jordan River.  The NEXT book – Deuteronomy – is Moses reaffirming and repeating and clarifying all the laws and rules of God for the people, and challenging them to keep them and be blessed, or fail to obey and be cursed, before they officially stepped into Canaan.