על החוקים לפרטיהם, ספר ג כ״אOn the Special Laws, Book III 21
א׳
1[120] The holy law describes the man who has been slain without the deliberate intention of him who did the deed as having been delivered by God into the manslayer’s hands. In this phrase it is partly defending one who has admittedly taken the life of another on the ground that it was the life of a guilty person.
ב׳
2[121] For it assumes that a merciful and forgiving God would never surrender an innocent man to be done to death but only one who having been enabled by his resourcefulness to make a skilful escape from the justice of men has been arraigned and condemned in the invisible court of Nature, that court in which truth is seen in perfect purity, which is not beclouded by verbal artifices, since it never accepts words at all but unveils motives and brings hidden intentions into open daylight. Partly, too, it lays the manslayer under the imputation, not indeed of murder, since he is held to have been the minister of divine judgement, but of a defilement of little note and quite insignificant, for which pardon may well be asked and granted.
ג׳
3[122] For in inflicting chastisement on offenders whose deeds have been evil beyond all remedy God uses as His ministers those whose sins are few and easily remedied, though He does not show approval of them but merely takes them as suitable instruments of vengeance. For He would not wish that anyone whose whole life is stainless and his lineage also should set his hand to homicide however justly deserved.
ד׳
4[123] He therefore sentenced the involuntary manslayer to go into exile, but not just anywhere nor yet for all time. For He assigned to persons convicted under this head six cities, an eighth part of those allotted to the consecrated tribe, a fact recorded in the name of “cities of refuge” which He gave to them, and by a further edict He limited the time of banishment to the life of the high priest, after whose death the exile should be permitted to return.