Essay к Дварим 4:41

In a brief passage that seems utterly out of place amid the deep rhetoric of this section, Moshe carries out a command he had received in Num. 35:9–34 to make sure that an accidental manslayer has a special place(s) to flee to from an avenging family. Perhaps this has been placed here because it is one of the few “laws and regulations” in the Torah whose observance is mandated on the east bank of the Jordan River—and hence is one of the few that Moshe personally gets to carry out.