aocount, sufficient cause will appear for the frequency with which God had recourse- to violent death in the carrying out of his punitive purposes. Then, with respect to- murder, it wa.s the feeling of the time that a murderer must not be suffered to live, Putting the murderer to death was the only effectual way in those semi-savage times of teaching respect for life. Respect for life was taught to the avenger by-putting the city of refuge between him and the unwitting homicide. Respect for life W&R taught also by the inconvenience, to say the least of it, to which the homicide was put. It was taught by the requiring of more than one witness to establish a capital charge. ..4 nd we al,so need more re,spect for human life titan we often show. We- should not take it so recklessly and exultmgly in war; we should not take it under an insufficient plea of necessity on the gallows. There is a lamentable way of speaking of the brutal and hardened members of society, the class from which murderers so often come, as if they were little better than vermin. Many seem to- think that it is a matter of no great consequence whether a man be hanged or not. True, he has to die at last; but surely there is a great difference between death when it comes in spite of the attempts of physician and attendants to ward it off, and when it comes by our deliberate infliction of it. We have all sorts of institutions and instruments to defend life by land and by sea; we have one hideous instrument, the gallows, to take it away. And as we see God advancing men, by the appointment of these cities of refuge, from the "wild justice" of private revenge to a calm reliance- on public justice, so we may hope that the spirit of love and the spirit of Christ will more and more prevail amongst us, till at last the gallows will be banished, if not into utter oblivion, at all events into antiquarian obscurity. V. CONSIDER HOW THESE CITIES OF REFUGE WERE TO BE LEVJTICAL CITIIIB. It was fitting that the Levites should have charge of these cities, since the Levites belonged !o no tribe in particular, but to the whole nation. They were removed from the temptation which would otherwise have come, if the city of refuge had belonged to tlie same tribe as the blood avenger. Unless the city of refuge was made really efficacious, it was no city of refuge at all. Giving Levi the charge of these cities also prevented jealousies between tribes. It conferred too on the homicide certain privileges he might not otherwise have had; he gained opportunities of Leviticul instruction. God can make his own abiding compensations to those who fall into calamity by no fault of their own. None can really hurt us but ourselves in that which is inward, permanent, and of real importance. VI. CONSIDER HOW THE DEATH OF THE HIGH PRIEST AFFECTED THE POSITION OF THE UNWITTING MANSLA.YER. He was then free from any further disability and need of confinement. The death of the high priest had a great expiatory effect. .According to the value of the types, he was holier than all the unblemished beasts, and his death counted for very much indeed in its cleansing efficacy. Thus we see, by tlus reference to the death of the high priest, how God regarded his own honour as a holy God. Blood defiled the land, even when spilt unwittingly, and nothing less than the death of the high priest could cleanse away the stain. Nothing less could do it, but this did it quite su.fficiently.-Y.
EXPOSITION. union between them ; but this union no CH.APTER XXXVI. doubt survived in many cases the death of the common ancestor, whose authority would Tu JUllRI..&.GE OF HEIRESSES (vere. 1- then devolve upon the oldest efficient member 13). Ver. 1.-The chief fathers. The same of the house. The familie1 of the children. phrase ill more correctly translated in Exod. of Gilead. "The mishpachoth of the Beni- vi. 25 "beach of the fathers."' It ill, how- Gilead " certainly did not include the M_a• ever, probable t}iat n ,::l\(y (fathers) is a con- chirites, who were somewhat sharply dis- traction for Ml::l~tt·n•~ (fathers' houses). tinguished from the other Manass1 tes (see The fathers' house we.a the next recognised above on eh. i:xvi. 29; xn:ii. 39 ft'.) ; it ill and familiar division below the mishpachah even doubtful whether they included the (family). Probably the fathers' house in- Gileadites proper, who took their name (and cludtd originally all the descendants of a perhaps traced their descent) from Gilead. liviug ancestor, who formed the bond of but not from his ■ons. lt DJAJ be COIi" 'a. u.xv1. 1-13.) THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.