פּירוש אויף במדבר 35:13

שש ערי מקלט [AND AS TO THE CITIES WHICH YOU SHALL GIVE] SIX CITIES OF REFUGE (THERE SHALL BE FOR YOU] — This tells us that although Moses during his life-time set aside three cities on that side of the Jordan (Deuteronomy 4:41), they did not provide refuge until the three had been chosen which Joshua assigned in the land of Canaan on the west side of the Jordan (Sifrei Bamidbar 160:2; Makkot 9b).

שש ערי מקלט תהיינה לכם, “you shall have six cities of refuge.” We learn from this verse that although Moses already set aside three of these cities (on the east bank) while he was still alive, they did not begin to function as cities of refuge until the other three cities were so designated after the conquest of the land of Canaan. Even though nine and a half tribes resided on the west bank of the Jordan as compared to two and a half tribes on the east bank, both sides had the same number of cities of refuge. This indicates that the relative incidence of murder in the territory of the two and a half tribes was statistically far higher than that in Eretz Yisrael proper. Gilead had a bad reputation in this regard as we know from Hoseah 6,8 :”Gilead is a city of evildoers, tracked up with blood.” The provision of three cities of refuge for that part of the land of Israel reflects the goodness of the Lord as we read in Psalms 25,8: “Good and upright is the Lord; therefore He shows the sinners the way.” If G’d is so compassionate towards involuntary murderers, showing them a path how to escape from their predicament, how much more compassionate must He be towards genuinely righteous people!

Nachmanides provides two separate reasons why the Torah provided relatively more cities of refuge for a territory with such a small population as the east bank of the Jordan. One reason cited is that it was in honour of Moses who had set these towns aside already during his life time when there really had not been any need to do so. The second reason is purely functional. Seeing that the territory in which the two and a half tribes settled, i.e. the territory formerly under the control of Sichon and Og was so much larger than that of the nine and a half tribes on the west bank, had the allocation been proportionate to the relative population, the average distance a potential killer would have had to travel to escape the avenger would have been so much greater that his chances of actually reaching a safe location would have been unrealistically small. Hence, the same number of such cities was allocated by the Torah to that region as was allocated to a region which had been ruled over by no fewer than 31 kings.