Komentarz do Powtórzonego Prawa 19:3

תכין לך הדרך THOU SHALT PREPARE THEE A WAY — “Refuge!” "Refuge!" was inscribed at each crossroad (to point the way to the nearest city of refuge) (Makkot 10b).

ושלשת את גבול ארצך, “you shall divide the territory of your land into three sections.” The simile continues, i.e. in order to make a total of six cities of refuge together with the three on the east bank; they are to correspond to the six extremities in our universe. The author understands this division in terms of the three parts of the universe we described earlier. The celestial regions are perceived as the topmost of these three parts of ארצך. Having attained that level in his penitence, the unintentional killer will begin his ascent to spiritual rehabilitation. This is the meaning of והיה לנוס שמה כל רוצח, the letters of the tetragrammaton are perceived as “open” letters, allowing easy access for the fleeing killer. [I believe the whole allegorical approach is based on the fact that this legislation had been spelled out in Numbers 35,9-34. The author may feel that the repetition is meant to allude to the mystical element of how it is possible to completely rehabilitate oneself for killing a person seeing one cannot bring him back to life. Ed.]

At every fork in the road. So that he does not err at the fork in the road.

ושלשת את גבול ארך, “you shall divide your land into three sections.” According to tradition, the total area of the Holy Land comprises 400 by 400 Parsah (1 parsah is equivalent to 4480 square meters.). According to the Talmud in tractate Makkot, folio 9, the word ושלשת means that you are to divide this area into three parts 100 parsah from Hebron south 100 , 100 parsah from north from Hebron to Sh’chem (Safed); 100 parsah from Sh’chem to Kadesh. From there to the north 100 parsah. If this is correct, it would follow that the people dwelling between Hebron and Safed were much closer to the nearest city of refuge than people living in any other section of the land. The answer provided by Abbaye is that the region around Safed was known to harbour many killers. He based himself on Hoseah 6,9: חבר כהנים דרך ירצחו שכמה כי זמה עשו, “the gang of priest is like the ambuscade of bandits who murder on the road to Sh’chem, for they have encouraged depravity.” The expression “gang of priests,“ sounds peculiar. What is meant by this? According to Rabbi Elazar this was a band of people who ganged up on priests who illegally raided storage barns of grain to help themselves to the portions meant for priests which the farmers had not distributed although the Torah bids them to do this. Seeing that their conduct was liable to result in at least unintentional killing, the cities of refuge were placed in their vicinity. In the region between kadesh and Hebron, murders also occurred frequently so that cities of refuge were placed there to allow those who had not killed deliberately to take refuge there. If you were to ask that if even on the west bank of Israel there were numerous instances of killings, why did Moses place half the cities of refuge there? We had stated originally that he did so because he felt that that area was more lawless than the “holy” area west of the Jordan? We have to fall back on the explanation that the area around Gilead was even more plagued by violent people than the area west of the Jordan. The prophet Hoseah, in the verse before the one we quoted described Gilead as “drenched in blood.”

תכין לך הדרך, “prepare the way for yourself;” the route to such cities of refuge should not be a narrow path, etc., but a road that is easy to travel, and has been marked clearly. Rabbi Avin, son of Rabbi Yaakov, is quoted in a Midrash on Psalms 25,10 describing how every mile or so, there were markers how to get to these cities, and in every kiosk, there were directional signals identifying the route. [The purpose was not only for the killer to know how to get to such cities, but to remind the people at large to be careful never to become guilty of killing through negligence. Ed.] This was hinted at two verses earlier in the same chapter of Psalms.

ושלשת את גבול ארצך AND THOU SHALT DIVIDE THE TERRITORY OF THY LAND … INTO THREE PARTS — so that from the point where the boundary begins unto the first city of refuge there should be the same length of journey as there is from it to the second city; and that there should be the same distance from the second to the third and from the third to the other (opposite) boundary of the Land of Israel (Makkot 9b).

The distance from the border, etc. You might ask that based to this division, the land would be divided into four sections! The answer is that the distance from the border until the second town of refuge is the same distance as from the first town until the last [town]. And from the second town until the second border is also the same as these distances. Therefore it is called “three sections.” I gave the same explanation in parshas Terumah (Shmos 26:26) regarding the bars. It also explains in Perek Eilu Hein Hagolin (Makkos 9b) [like Rashi here], that “divide into three sections” means that the land is divided into four sections along its breadth. See there.

ושלשת את גבול ארצך, “so that you will effectively divide the borders of your country into three segments;” how did this work out in practice? The Land of Israel was 400 miles long (from south to north) It was about 100 miles from Chevron to Sh’chem, and from there to Kadesh another 100 miles. The three cities of refuge therefore symbolically divided the land into three sections. You will note that the center section therefore was shorter than the northern and southern section respectively. This is accounted for in the minds of the sages by the fact that both Chevron and Sh’chem were cities in which a lot of bloodshed occurred. They quote a verse in Hosea 6,9, as supporting their interpretation.

כל רוצח, “every murderer, regardless of intentional or unintentional.” We explained this already on Numbers 35,14.