Numbers 35
CHAPTER 34 showed no provision for the Levites, the family or tribe of Israel, who were set apart for the service of God. It was right that they should not be counted in when the land was portioned out to the children of Israel, for theirs was the highest privilege of serving God; we read of His care for them in the eighteenth chapter. God had told Aaron for himself and the tribe of Levi in verse 8 of that chapter,
“Thou shalt have no inheritance in their land, neither shalt thou have any part among them. I am thy part and thine inheritance among the children of Israel.”
Yet, God will see that His servants are provided for in natural things, and in this chapter today we read of His command that the children of Israel shall give to the Levites, forty-eight cities and land around them for their homes. All over the land of Canaan were these little towns of the Levites to be found, and six of them were to be made hiding places or refuges for those who accidentally or ignorantly killed any person. God would not make little of the shedding of blood, but made a difference between the murderer, and those who killed without realization of what they did.
Verse 25 then appointed, to the one not looked on as a murderer, a shelter until the high priest’s death; until that time he was homeless, and yet in the keeping of God. No doubt, God was, in this appointment, looking on to the time when Israel should be guilty of the death of His Son. Some of them did it knowingly, and through hatred to Jesus; these have borne their punishment on earth, and shall vet bear more in eternity. But the mass of the people were covered by the prayer of Jesus,
“Father; forgive them for they know not what they do.”
In The Acts, chapter 3, verse 17, the apostle Peter declared that “through ignorance ye (Jews) did it”, and 1 Corinthians 2, verse 8 states, “which none of the princes of this world knew, for had they known it they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” On this account, God was pleased to offer salvation first to the Jew, and even the unsaved Jews are in a special sense preserved by God. When Christ gives up this place as the believer’s High Priest in heaven (Hebrews 10:2121And having an high priest over the house of God; (Hebrews 10:21)), taking His heavenly people, the Church, home, Israel will go back to their land and have it as their home again.
ML 08/17/1924