What Does Numbers 35:13 Mean?
Of these cities that you shall give, you shall have six cities of escape.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And of these cities which ye shall give six cities shall ye have for refuge.THE KEY
The Hebrew word for refuge names a place that receives you, so protection begins with being taken in while judgment still lies ahead.
THE MEANING
This verse makes refuge a reachable place, not a feeling the endangered person must create. The six cities receive and shelter the manslayer from immediate retaliation while judgment still has its place.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that protection requires pretending harm did not happen: refuge interrupts revenge without erasing judgment.
THE ROOT
מִקְלָט
miqlāṭ
GROWS FROM
קלט
q-l-ṭ
To receive, take in, or harbor.
“cities of escape” in this verse is miqlāṭ. English makes refuge sound mainly like a condition of safety, while the Hebrew word connects it to receiving: a person is taken in somewhere. Here protection has a location, and it holds the manslayer apart from the avenger until judgment.
ALSO GROWS
qālaṭ: To receive or take in.
קָלַט
The verb is the action beneath refuge: someone is received rather than left exposed.
miqlāṭ: Refuge; a place of refuge.
מִקְלָט
The noun gives that receiving a place the endangered person can reach.
THE PATTERN
Refuge is given as a reachable place of shelter that protects a person before danger or retaliation has the final word.
And if a man does not lie in wait, but God lets him come into his hand, then I set for you a place to which he flees.To the chief Musician for the sons of Korah, A Song upon Alamoth. God is our refuge and strength, a help found very near in the narrow place.So that through two unshifting deeds, in which it is without power for God to lie, we might have a strong comfort, we who have fled for refuge to grip the hope lying before us.THE THREAD
And they shall be cities of escape for you from the blood-redeemer, so that the crusher does not die until he stands before the assembly for judgment.The same Hebrew word מִקְלָט (miqlāṭ, refuge) appears here: refuge is a place that receives the manslayer and keeps the avenger from killing them. The shelter lasts until the person stands for judgment, so protection does not erase accountability.
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