What Does Numbers 35:6 Mean?
Among the cities you shall give the Levites, there shall be six cities of escape, which you shall appoint for the crusher, so that he may flee there; and you shall add forty-two cities to them.
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 among the cities which ye shall give unto the Levites there shall be six cities for refuge, which ye shall appoint for the manslayer, that he may flee thither: and to them ye shall add forty and two cities.THE KEY
The Hebrew root behind “to flee” also yields a word for “refuge,” binding the movement toward shelter to the shelter itself.
THE MEANING
This verse holds together the person who has caused a death and the need for refuge. Six cities give that flight a definite destination, joined to forty-two more in the wider city network; shelter has a place within shared life.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It loosens the assumption that naming someone a manslayer makes refuge impossible: the verse provides a place of flight while keeping the death in view.
THE ROOT
לָנֻס
lānūs
GROWS FROM
נוּס
nûs
flee, escape
The verse uses מִקְלָט (miqlat, refuge) for the cities and לָנֻס (lānūs, to flee) for the movement; elsewhere, the same root yields מָנוֹס (mānōs, refuge). That echo binds flight and shelter into one word-family: refuge belongs to the movement that reaches it.
ALSO GROWS
nās: he fled; one who flees
נָס
This verb form names the movement toward safety that the verse gives a destination.
mānōs: refuge; place of escape
מָנוֹס
This noun from the same root joins the act of fleeing to the shelter sought.
THE PATTERN
Scripture gives flight from danger a reachable place of refuge.
That every one who strikes a living soul by straying, without perceiving, may flee there, and they shall be your refuge from the blood-redeemer.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
But I sing of your strength, and I shout your faithful love at dawn. For you have been my high place and my place to flee to in the day of my narrow place.Numbers 35:6 uses לָנֻס (lānūs, to flee); Psalm 59:16 uses מָנוֹס (mānōs, refuge), a noun from the same root. The word-family ties escape to the shelter it seeks, turning refuge into a destination for flight.
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