page_title: Shofetim (parsha)
section_title: Fifth reading — Deuteronomy 18:14–19:13
hierarchical_section_title: Shofetim (parsha) / Readings / Fifth reading — Deuteronomy 18:14–19:13
caption_attribution_description: English: The City of Refuge. Caption: "This man who is running has no coat on. He is running with all his might. He has thrown away his coat so that he could run the faster. He was in the woods cutting down a tree, and his axe slipped out of his hand and struck another man who was standing near, so that he died. He did not mean to hurt the man, and he is very sorry for it. But now the dead man's brother is running after him with a sword in his hand to kill him. The brother does not wait to ask whether the man did it on purpose. But he is very angry. He will kill him with his sword if he can catch him. But he cannot catch him, for he has reached the gate of the city, and there a kind man has caught him by the hand. He will take him into the city and give him a house to live in where no one can hurt him. For this is the city of refuge. It is the place where a person who has killed another by accident may come and be safe. But if the man had killed the other one on purpose, and because he hated him, then they would not take him." Illustration from the 1897 Bible Pictures and What They Teach Us: Containing 400 Illustrations from the Old and New Testaments: With brief descriptions by Charles Foster
context_page_description: Shofetim or Shoftim is the 48th weekly Torah portion in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading and the fifth in the Book of Deuteronomy. It constitutes Deuteronomy 16:18–21:9. The parashah provides a constitution — a basic societal structure — for the Israelites. The parashah sets out rules for judges, kings, Levites, prophets, cities of refuge, witnesses, war, and unsolved murders.
  This parashah has 5590 letters, 1523 words, 97 verses, and 192 lines in a sefer Torah. Jews generally read it in August or September.
context_section_description: In the fifth reading, Moses foretold that God would raise a prophet from among them like Moses and the Israelites were to heed him. When at Mount Horeb, the Israelites had asked not to hear God's voice directly; God created the role of the prophet to speak God's words, promising to hold to account anybody who failed to heed the prophet's words. But any prophet who presumed to speak an oracle in God's name that God had not commanded, or who spoke in the name of other gods, was to die. This was how the people were to determine whether God spoke the oracle: If the prophet spoke in the name of God and the oracle did not come true, then God had not spoken that oracle, the prophet had uttered it presumptuously, and the people were not to fear him. A closed portion ends here with the end of chapter 18.
  In the continuation of the reading, Moses instructed that when the Israelites had settled in the land, they were to divide the land into three parts and set aside three Cities of Refuge, so that any manslayer could have a place to which to flee. And if the Israelites faithfully observed all the law and God enlarged the territory, then they were to add three more towns to those three. Only a manslayer who had killed another unwittingly, without being the other's enemy, might flee there and live. For instance, if a man went with his neighbor into a grove to cut wood, and as he swung an axe, the axe-head flew off the handle and struck and killed the neighbor, then the man could flee to one of the cities of refuge and live. The second open portion ends here.
  In the continuation of the reading, Moses instructed that if, however, one who was the enemy of another lay in wait, struck the other a fatal blow, and then fled to a city of refuge, the elders of the slayer's town were to have the slayer turned over to the blood-avenger to be put to death. The fifth reading and a closed portion end here.
caption: The City of Refuge (illustration from the 1897 Bible Pictures and What They Teach Us by Charles Foster)
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