Shechem's Redemption

Then the Lord spoke to Joshua. He said, "Tell the people of Israel to choose the cities to go to for safety, just as I directed you through Moses. Anyone who kills a person by accident can run there for safety. So can anyone who kills a person without meaning to. The one who is charged with murder will be kept safe from the nearest male relative of the person who was killed. Suppose the one who is charged runs for safety to one of those cities. Then he must stand in the entrance of the city gate. He must state his case in front of the elders of that city. They must let him come into their city. They must give him a place to live there. Suppose the nearest male relative of the person who was killed comes after him. Then the elders must not hand him over to that relative. That's because he didn't mean to kill his neighbor. He didn't make evil plans to do it. He must stay in that city until his case has been brought to the community court. He must stay there until the high priest who is serving at that time dies. Then he can go back to his own home. He can return to the town he ran away from." So the people of Israel set apart Kedesh in Galilee. It's in the hill country of Naphtali. They set apart Shechem. It's in the hill country of Ephraim. They set apart Kiriath Arba. It's in the hill country of Judah. Kiriath Arba is also called Hebron. Joshua 20:1-7 (NIRV)

In an earlier post, I recalled an incident where the entire population of the town of Shechem was slaughtered by Simeon and Levi because its prince had raped their sister, Dinah. With that fresh in my mind, I was reading through the book of Joshua when I came to the chapters discussing the allotment of Canaan to the tribes, particularly the cities of safety (or, "cities of refuge", the term I'm more familiar with).

The basic idea is that if someone accidentally killed a person, he could flee to a city of refuge to protect himself from the deceased's relatives, who presumably would attempt to avenge the death. I'm not sure this killing-your-kinfolk's-killer was an ancient cultural rite or just a common practice, but in any case, God provides an end to the cycle by allowing the killer to avoid this fate by living in one of the cities of refuge (provided, of course, the killing was judged unintentional).

Shechem was designated as one of such cities, which I thought was redeeming, so to speak, given that a massive, vengeful slaughter occurred there some 450-odd years earlier. But the "redemption" doesn't end with that; Shechem was also designated as a Levitical city, too. Levites were chosen by God to serve as his ministers and priests, and consequently weren't assigned any territory in Israel. They were, however, assigned towns among the other tribes' territories to live in. So not only was Shechem a city of refuge, but it was a town of ministers of the Lord.

There's still more redemption for Shechem by the end of the book of Joshua:

And Joseph's bones, which the Israelites had brought up from Egypt, were buried at Shechem in the tract of land that Jacob bought for a hundred pieces of silver from the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem. This became the inheritance of Joseph's descendants. Joshua 24:32 (NIV)

The town once destroyed by the sons of Israel (the man) was later redeemed, in my opinion, by the sons of Israel (the nation), by declaring that it be a city of refuge, a city of the Lord's ministers, and the burial place of Joseph.