D. The Levitical cities
D. The Levitical cities(TOC)
Numbers 35 assigns forty-eight cities to the Levites, of which thirteen fell to the priests. That the right of full possession is intended, admits of no doubt. Compare the execution of the command, Joshua 21. In addition to each city, a square of two thousand cubits was set apart, to serve for suburbs or commons.
1. The principal objection raised by critics against these appointments regards the practical impossibility of carrying them out. So first Gramberg, and afterwards Graf and Wellhausen. The latter says, "The directions to set apart a common of two thousand cubits square around the cities (in which the latter are considered as mere points), to serve as pasture-ground for the Levites, could perhaps be executed in a South-Russian steppe, or in the case of newly built cities in the West of North America, but by no means in mountainous Palestine, where such a geometrical space is nowhere to be found," etc.
2. Historical traces of the existence of these Levitical cities do not appear outside of the Book of Joshua. A considerable number of them was still in the possession of the Canaanites during the period of Judges and the early kings; e.g., Gibeon, Gezer, Taanach, Shechem.
3. In the Deuteronomic time the Levites lived scattered over all Judah: each place had its own, nowhere did they live together in a compact mass.
4. Even after the exile the situation of the Levites was not materially changed. The execution of this command was deferred until Messianic days: indeed, it did not lie within the compass of human power, and cannot have been demanded in full earnest by the Priest Code itself.
5. The first historical germs of the whole conception must be sought in the cities of asylum of Deuteronomy. All altars were originally asyla. But whilst the former were destroyed by Josiah's reform, of course the need of the latter remained, and was provided for by the appointment of these cities of refuge. The truth is, that all of them were priestly or Levitical cities, moreover famous seats of the old cultus. Hence the suggestion, that the law of the Priest Code arose from nothing but the reminiscences of the pre-exilic plurality of places of worship. The idea of altar and priesthood was associated with many a city, and found natural expression in declaring the forty-eight places to have been the peculiar inheritance of the clerus ever since the Mosaic times.
Let us briefly see what these serious charges amount to. The impracticability of the command might be considerably less than Wellhausen imagines. His objection, that the arithmetical precision with which every thing is described proves an ideal character, falls immediately away as soon as we consider the numbers given as indicating the average allowance to be made for pasture-ground, nothing more than a general limit, a minimum which might be modified according to the circumstances or the geographical condition of the country. That the cities are considered as a point is true, if we take the point, not in its geometrical sense, but as having the size of each individual city. If Wellhausen means that the square of two thousand cubits included the city, there is nothing in the text to justify this view. The comparison with newly built cities is not entirely out of place; since in the conquest of Canaan many a city must have been destroyed, and a clean sweep made. That Levitical cities remained in possession of the Canaanites is nothing remarkable, and may at the same time account for the statement of Deuteronomy and later historical facts, which presuppose a partial scattering of the Levites all over the country. Wellhausen's remark, that no traces of the existence of Levitical cities appear in subsequent time, is most positively untrue. The fact is, that some very striking coincidences make the existence of this law highly probable. We refer to what happened in Beth-shemesh; to the fact that Jeremiah, of priestly descent, was born in Anathoth; that Abiathar, when dismissed by Solomon, was told to go to Anathoth; that Nob was a residence of priests. To see in the mention of all these cities in Joshua, not the origin of their priestly character, but simply the reminiscence of it, is possible indeed; but the critics should never forget that such statements are mere applications, not proofs, of their theory. That, according to Deuteronomy, the Levites lived scattered all over the country, may be attributed to various causes. If we could grant that the critical opinion of the late origin of the book was true, the natural explanation would be, that at the schism under Jeroboam I the Levites of the Northern kingdom emigrated to Judah. This shows, however, from their own premises, that the critics have no right to conclude the non-existence of the law. But it will suffice to assume only so much prophetical foresight in Moses as enabled him to see that the Levites might not immediately or perpetually enjoy the full possession of their patrimony. For a believer in prophecy, it is not impossible to suppose that Moses, under the inspiration of God's spirit, penetrated the future, even so far as to take in the time of Jeroboam and Josiah. Deuteronomy seems to allude to the Levitical cities in chapter 18:8b: "beside that which cometh of the sale of his patrimony" (compare Keil in loco, from whom Schultz differs). If it must be admitted that these laws did not go into operation after the exile, what can hinder us from putting them back into the Mosaic time, and assuming that they were never fully lived up to for the same reasons that prevented their execution after the exile? As to ineffectiveness, the case stands alike; and as to historical inducements to frame such regulations, the Mosaic period certainly offered more of them than the time of Ezra. The latter must have known that the law was impracticable: the Israelites in the desert need not. The analogy with the cities of refuge in Deuteronomy and the division of the land in Ezekiel is so far-fetched, and there are so many discrepancies between the latter and the Priest Code, that it is impossible to assume any other real connection, than that the prophet in a free manner reproduced what was known to him from the Priest Code. That such an institution as the cities of refuge could not have taken its rise in the reign of Josiah, but must at the very least be anterior to the establishment of the kingdom, is strongly argued by Dr. A. P. Bissell, in "The Law of Asylum in Israel," Leipzig, 1884.