על החוקים לפרטיהם, ספר ג כ״גOn the Special Laws, Book III 23
א׳
1[128] So then he bids the unintentional homicide flee to some of the cities allotted to this tribe, there to gain consolation and be saved from despairing of salvation altogether. There the place will remind him of the fearless courage once shewn in the past; there he may reflect that those who shed blood intentionally received not only full pardon but also rewards great and much to be desired and fraught with abundant happiness; and that, if they fared thus, much more will those whose act was not premeditated receive, not indeed such privileges as confer honour, but at least the lowest and last that they do not pay for the blood they have shed with their own. This shews that not every kind of homicide is culpable but only that which entails injustice, and that as for the other kinds if it is caused by an ardent yearning for virtue it is laudable and if unintentional it is free from blame.
ב׳
2[129] No more need be said about the first reason; we must proceed at once to explain the second. The law wishes to preserve the unintentional homicide, as it recognizes that in intention he was free from guilt, and that with his hands he had been the servant of justice, the overseer of human affairs. It knows that watching and waiting for him are blood-thirsty enemies, the kinsmen of the dead man, urged on to vengeance by overwhelming pity and inconsolable grief, and so carried away by unreasoning passion that they do not inquire what is true or essentially just.
ג׳
3[130] It therefore permitted such a one to fly for refuge, not to the holy temple, since he had not yet been purged, nor yet to some obscure and insignificant place where he might easily be surrendered as one of little account, but to a holy city which comes midway between holy and profane ground and is in a sense a secondary temple. For the cities of the consecrated order compared with the others receive a higher reverence, corresponding, I consider, to the honour paid to their respective occupants. The law wished in fact to use the superior rank of the city which gave them shelter to put the safety of the fugitive on the firmest possible footing.
ד׳
4[131] When, as I said, it appointed the death of the high priest as the date for the exile’s return, it did so for some such reason as this. Just as each single individual who is wilfully murdered has kinsmen to inflict vengeance on the murderer, so too the whole nation has a kinsman and close relative common to all in the high priest, who as ruler dispenses justice to litigants according to the law, who day by day offers prayers and sacrifices and asks for blessings, as for his brothers and parents and children, that every age and every part of the nation regarded as a single body may be united in one and the same fellowship, making peace and good order their aim.
ה׳
5[132] Everyone, then, who has slain another unintentionally must fear the high priest as a champion and defender of the slain and keep himself shut up within the city in which he has taken refuge, never venturing to shew himself outside the walls, that is, if he sets any value on his safety, or on a life secure from danger.
ו׳
6[133] When, then, he says that the exile must not return till the death of the high priest, it is as much as to say till the death of the common kinsman of all, who alone has authority to arbitrate on the rights both of the living and the dead.