Numbers 35 - Cities are set aside for the Levites
who have no allotment of land. Six
cities are established as cities of asylum where homicides can take
refuge. In addition there are 42 other
cities together with pastureland. The
land is to be ceded by the other tribes in accordance with the size of their
respective allotments. The deal with the cities of asylum is that homicides
shall not be subject to blood vengeance (by the family of the victim) “unless
he is first tried before the community” (35:12). Not
only Israelites, but aliens and transients are also allowed to take refuge
there.
The
chapter then goes on to discuss the
differentiation of crimes. In
general if a person kills another with a deadly weapon an avenger of blood
(presumably a relative) may put the perpetrator to death on sight. Likewise if a person accidentally kills
another person he has planned to injure (but not kill) he may be killed on
sight. But if a man accidentally causes another’s death and there is no enmity
then the community shall decide the case in accordance with certain principles:
he shall be taken to the city of refuge and stay there until the death of the
high pries. If the homicide leaves the
city on his own accord and is found by the avenger, he may be killed.
Only after the death
of the high priest (?)
may the homicide leave without fear. The evidence of one witness is insufficient
for putting any person to death. And no
money payment shall be permitted to suffice as a punishment for a murder. The perpetrator must be put to death. “Since
bloodshed desecrates the land, the land can have no atonement for the blood
shed on it except through the blood of him who shed it” (35:33).
Numbers 36 - This chapter deals
with the need to sort out how land bequeathed to women is to be handled when they
marry. Moses settles it by requiring such heiresses to marry someone belonging
to a clan of her ancestral tribe so that the heritage will stay with the tribe.
This basically nullifies what was decided in 27 since women who inherit
property must marry within the clan of their ancestors.
Origen (185-254 AD)
De Principiis (First
Principles)
Book II - On Christ
1 – “In the first place,
we must note that the nature of that deity which is in Christ in respect of His
being the only-begotten Son of God is one thing, and that human nature which He
assumed in these last times for the purposes of the dispensation (of grace) is
another.”
He
is called by various names: “He is termed Wisdom, according to the expression
of Solomon: ‘The Lord created me—the beginning of His ways, and among His
works, before He made any other thing; He founded me before the ages. In the
beginning, before He formed the earth, before He brought forth the fountains of
waters, before the mountains were made strong, before all the hills, He brought
me forth.’” [Proverbs 8:22-25]
Paul
calls Him the “first-born of every creature” in Colossians 1:15 and in 1
Corinthians 1:24, “the power of God and the wisdom of God.”
2 – We in no way mean to
imagine in as anything “impersonal” by calling him God’s “Wisdom” – The “only-begotten Son of God is His wisdom
hypostatically existing . . .” [substance or essence
underlying all reality].
“Wherefore
we have always held that God is the Father of His only-begotten Son, who was
born indeed of Him, and derives from Him what He is, but without any beginning,
not only such as may be measured by any divisions of time, but even that which
the mind alone can contemplate within itself, or behold, so to speak, with the
naked powers of the understanding. And therefore we must believe that Wisdom was
generated before any beginning that can be either comprehended or expressed.”
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