What Are Cities of Refuge?

Redemption E3 — So far in this series, we’ve explored the theme of redemption in the Eden story and in several stories in Exodus. In this episode, Jon and Tim look at how redemption language shows up in Torah laws about cities of refuge and unsolved murders, highlighting God’s provision for justice, the role of the blood redeemer, and communal responsibility in ancient Israel.

Timestamps:
Recap of Where We’ve Been (0:00-10:50)
Cities of Refuge and the “Blood Redeemer” (10:50-21:10)
Preventing Bloodshed in the Land (21:10-29:29)
A Sacrifice to Redeem a Guilty Community (29:29-47:20)

Referenced Resources:
You can view annotations for this episode—plus our entire library of videos, podcasts, articles, and classes—in the BibleProject app, available for Android and iOS.

Show Music:
“Hard Times” by Courtland Urbano
“Blue Sky” by C y g n
“Untitled” by unknown artist
BibleProject theme song by TENTS

Show Credits:
Production of today’s episode is by Lindsey Ponder, producer, and Cooper Peltz, managing producer. Tyler Bailey is our supervising engineer who also edited today’s episode and provided the sound design and mix. JB Witty does our show notes, and Hannah Woo provides the annotations for our app. Our host and creative director is Jon Collins, and our lead scholar is Tim Mackie.