Run to the City: The Road, the Gate, & the High Priest (Part II)

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The roads, gates, and living waters of Israel’s Cities of Refuge, and the Person they were always pointing toward.

Walking the Six Cities

These were not imaginary places.

Most can still be located today, and several have been excavated. Many sat on high ground behind heavy walls, which makes sense: a City of Refuge had to be a place an enemy could not simply walk into.

“The LORD is my rock and my fortress… my stronghold and my refuge” (2 Samuel 22:2–3).

Kedesh: The Holy Place in the Hills

Kedesh sat in the high hills of Upper Galilee, near today’s border with Lebanon. It was the hometown of Barak, who led Israel to victory alongside Deborah (Judges 4:6).

How fitting that the northernmost refuge was named “holy,” because the only true refuge is found in a perfect and holy God.

Shechem: Between Blessing and Curse

Shechem lay in a narrow valley between two mountains, Mount Gerizim to the south and Mount Ebal to the north. These were the mountains of blessing and cursing.

When Israel entered the land, Moses commanded that six tribes stand on Gerizim to proclaim the blessings of obedience and six stand on Ebal to proclaim the curses of disobedience (Deuteronomy 11:29; 27:11–13). 

Joshua carried it out, reading “all the words of the law, the blessing and the curse” to the whole nation in that valley (Joshua 8:33–34).

Now think about where that places the refugee.

He lived his days in the space between blessing and curse, between the mountain of mercy and the mountain of judgment.

And, that is exactly where Jesus stands as an arbitor on our behalf.

“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13), so that “in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles” (Galatians 3:14).

He is the one Mediator between God and man (1 Timothy 2:5), standing in the valley between justice and mercy, and in the end He took the place of the high priest in our stead.

The ruins of ancient Shechem, at Tell Balata on the edge of modern Nablus, still show massive fortifications. 

Excavations led by Ernst Sellin and later by G. Ernest Wright’s Drew–McCormick expedition uncovered huge stone city walls, monumental gate complexes, and a large fortress. 

Picture the elders sitting at gates like these, listening as a breathless refugee pleaded his case.

And here is a detail that is simply breathtaking. Near Shechem is Jacob’s well, near “the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph” (John 4:5).

That is where Jesus sat down and offered living water to a Samaritan woman whose life had been marked by shame.

In the shadow of a City of Refuge, the true Refuge sat by a well and welcomed a stranger in need.

Living Waters

Jacob's well is worth contemplating a bit more, because of what Jesus said there.

Israel was never a land that could water itself. Moses told the people that the land they were entering was "not like the land of Egypt," where crops were watered by human effort from the Nile, but "a land of hills and valleys, which drinks water by the rain from heaven," a land the LORD Himself cares for (Deuteronomy 11:10–12). Egypt had a river it could count on all year long.

Israel had to look up.

Every harvest depended on the rain God sent in its season. Water was not something Israel could produce. It was something they received.

That dependence shaped how Jewish tradition thought about water and cleansing. Water that came straight from God's hand, rain falling from above or a spring rising up from below without any human help, was set apart. Water drawn and carried in human vessels was not.

Scripture and Jewish tradition give the purest of these waters, water flowing from a spring, a beautiful name: mayim chayyim, "living water" (Leviticus 14:5; 15:13, where the ESV translates it "fresh water").

The mikveh, the ritual bath used for purification, had to be filled with this kind of God-given water: rain gathered naturally or water from a natural spring. If the water had been drawn and poured in by human hands, then traditionally, the mikveh could not be used for cleansing.

Think about what that means.

Cleansing could not be manufactured. It had to be received as a gift from God.

Now picture Jesus sitting at Jacob's well. It was a well dug by human hands, deep in the ground, and the woman had come with her jar to draw from it, as she did every day.

Jesus told her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water" (John 4:10).

And then He went further: "whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life" (John 4:14).

Water no one has to draw. Water that comes from God. Water that cleanses. And He offered it first to a woman who had carried shame for years, right in the shadow of a City of Refuge.

Later, on the last day of the Feast of Booths in Jerusalem, Jesus stood up and cried out, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, 'Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water'" (John 7:37–38).

Centuries earlier, God had grieved through Jeremiah that His people had forsaken Him, "the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water" (Jeremiah 2:13).

Jesus is the gift we could never draw up for ourselves. He is the living water.

Cleansing in the city of refuge. Water and refuge belonged together in Israel's life. As we saw earlier, the Talmud says a City of Refuge had to have a reliable water supply.

Hebron, one of the six, had a well-known public pool mentioned in Scripture (2 Samuel 4:12), and a large ancient stone pool still found in the city today is traditionally identified with it.

The refugee needed more than safety.

He carried the weight of a life lost. Inside the city he was protected, but he still needed to be made clean.

Jewish tradition taught that it was the death of the high priest that finally atoned for what had happened and set him free.

In Christ, refuge and cleansing are found in the same place.

Through Ezekiel He said, "I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean" (Ezekiel 36:25).

And Hebrews invites us to "draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean".

Refuge keeps us safe. Living water makes us clean.

In Jesus, we are given both.

Hebron: The City of Fellowship

Hebron, also called Kiriath-arba, sits high in the Judean hills, about 3,000 feet above sea level.

It was Abraham’s home, the place where he built an altar under the oaks of Mamre (Genesis 13:18), and it was later given to Caleb and then to the priests, the sons of Aaron (Joshua 14:13; 21:13). 

The name is often connected with the Hebrew word for friend or companion, and Abraham is the one Scripture lovingly calls “a friend of God” (James 2:23).

The ancient city lies on the hill of Tel Rumeida, where archaeologists have found Middle Bronze Age walls built of enormous stones.

Nearby, over the traditional Cave of Machpelah, stands a massive enclosure built by Herod the Great more than 2,000 years ago. Its walls still stand today and are still in use, making it one of the oldest continuously used buildings in the world.

Bezer: The Stronghold in the Wilderness

Bezer stood “in the wilderness on the tableland” of Reuben (Deuteronomy 4:43), on the high plateau east of the Dead Sea.

Its exact location is still debated. But Bezer appears outside the Bible in one of the most famous inscriptions ever found, the Mesha Stele, carved by a king of Moab around 840 BC. In it, Mesha boasts, “I built Bezer, for it was in ruins.”

A City of Refuge named “stronghold” stood in a barren, open wilderness, a sweet reminder that God provides shelter in the very places we feel most exposed.

Ramoth-Gilead: The Heights & the Balm

Ramoth-Gilead, often identified with Tell er-Rumeith in northern Jordan, was a fortified hill town on the frontier.

Excavations there have uncovered a small, strongly walled fortress. It was a contested city: King Ahab died in battle trying to take it back (1 Kings 22).

Gilead was also famous for its healing balm. Jeremiah cried, “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?” (Jeremiah 8:22).

Generations of Christ followers have answered with the old spiritual: yes, there is a balm in Gilead, and His name is Yeshua (Jesus).

Golan: Beauty for Ashes

Golan lay in Bashan, the rugged highland east of the Sea of Galilee.

The exact site of the ancient city is uncertain, but the region that carries its name, the Golan Heights, is one of the most striking landscapes in the land. The plateau was formed by ancient volcanic eruptions. Layers of lava and ash weathered over time into dark basalt soils, rich in minerals and remarkably fertile.

Scripture celebrates Bashan’s abundance: its strong cattle (Psalm 22:12; Amos 4:1), its mighty oaks (Isaiah 2:13), and its rich pastures (Micah 7:14).

Today the Golan is known for vineyards, orchards of apples and cherries, wildflowers, waterfalls, and the snowmelt streams of Mount Hermon.

It is a place of retreat, high in the mountains, with sweeping views over the Sea of Galilee.

There is a sermon in that soil. The most fruitful ground in the region grew from what fire left behind. Isaiah prophesied that the Messiah would come “to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning” (Isaiah 61:3; older translations render it “beauty for ashes”).

Jesus read those very words aloud in the synagogue at Nazareth and said, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21).

How fitting that the refuge in the land of ashes grows such abundant life.

Where the Fathers Rested

Here is a detail that is easy to miss. The great fathers of Israel were buried in two cities that would later become Cities of Refuge.

In Hebron, Abraham bought the cave of Machpelah as a burial place (Genesis 23). Sarah was laid there, then Abraham, Isaac, Rebekah, Leah, and finally Jacob, who made his sons promise to carry him home from Egypt to rest beside his fathers (Genesis 49:29–33; 50:13).

Jewish tradition goes further, though this is not confirmed in Scripture. The Talmud and the Midrash explain the name Kiriath-arba, “the city of four,” as referring to four couples buried there: Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, and Jacob and Leah.

In Shechem, Joseph was buried.

Before he died in Egypt, he made Israel swear to carry his bones out when God brought them home (Genesis 50:25). Hebrews 11:22 honors this request as an act of faith.

Four hundred years later, Moses carried those bones out of Egypt (Exodus 13:19), and Joshua laid them to rest at Shechem, in the plot of ground Jacob had bought (Joshua 24:32).

Stephen adds in Acts 7:15–16 that “our fathers,” Jacob’s sons, were also carried to Shechem and laid there.

Why does this matter? Consider a theological possibility.

These cities became places where people waited, safe but not yet free, for the death of the high priest. The bodies of the patriarchs lay in those same cities, waiting too. Hebrews 11 says these men “all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar” (Hebrews 11:13), and that “apart from us they should not be made perfect” (Hebrews 11:40).

They waited in refuge for the death of the true High Priest. And when Jesus died, Matthew records something astonishing:

“The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city” (Matthew 27:52–53).

Paul writes that when Christ ascended, “he led a host of captives” (Ephesians 4:8).

Scripture does not explicitly connect the patriarchs’ burials to the law of refuge, so this is best held as a contemplation rather than a doctrine.

Still, what a beautiful picture: the fathers of the faith resting in the Cities of Refuge, held safe until the High Priest died and the way home was finally opened.

Jerusalem: The Seventh City of Refuge?

Scripture names six Cities of Refuge, and Jerusalem is not one of them. But it is worth asking, gently and with open hands, whether God was quietly preparing a seventh.

Look at how many of the markings Jerusalem carries.

It was a city on a hill, surrounded by protection. “As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the LORD surrounds his people, from this time forth and forevermore” (Psalm 125:2). The psalmist even sang of Jerusalem in the language of refuge: “Within her citadels God has made himself known as a fortress” (Psalm 48:3).

It was a place people fled to for safety. Before the six cities were ever named, God promised Israel that for an accidental death, “I will appoint for you a place to which he may flee” (Exodus 21:13). In the generations that followed, people in danger ran to the altar in Jerusalem and took hold of its horns, as Adonijah and Joab did (1 Kings 1:50; 2:28). The altar itself was understood as a place of sanctuary.

It had a road that all of Israel traveled. Three times a year, families walked the pilgrim roads up to Jerusalem (Deuteronomy 16:16), singing the Songs of Ascents along the way. “I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the LORD!’” (Psalm 122:1).

It was the home of the high priest. Every refugee in every city was waiting on the life of one man who served in Jerusalem. The release of all six cities was bound up with what happened there.

It was open to outsiders. God declared, “my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples” (Isaiah 56:7).

It was the city of a priest-king. Long before David, Jerusalem was known as Salem, and its king, Melchizedek, was also “priest of God Most High” (Genesis 14:18). Hebrews tells us his name means “king of righteousness” and his title “king of peace” (Hebrews 7:2), and that Jesus is a high priest forever “after the order of Melchizedek” (Hebrews 7:17).

And then the most important marking of all: Jerusalem is where the true High Priest died.

Jesus “suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood” (Hebrews 13:12). Three days later, He rose again. The death that every refugee had waited for happened once, in one place, for all of us. “We have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Hebrews 10:10).

In the six cities, freedom came only when a high priest died, and then the next high priest took his place and the waiting began again. In Jerusalem, the High Priest died and rose, and He never needs to be replaced.

The release He won is permanent.

Why Seven?

Throughout Scripture, seven is the number of completion. God finished His work of creation and rested on the seventh day (Genesis 2:2). The seventh day became the Sabbath, a gift of rest. Every seventh year the land rested, and after seven times seven years came the Jubilee, when debts were released and people returned home to their inheritance (Leviticus 25:10).

Six cities offered real but incomplete refuge. They protected people while they waited. Perhaps Jerusalem, where Christ died and rose again, is the seventh: the place where the waiting ended, refuge was made complete, and the captives were set free to go home. That is exactly what Jesus promised: “Come to me… and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).

And the story does not end there. Scripture closes with a vision of a New Jerusalem, a city whose “gates will never be shut by day, and there will be no night there” (Revelation 21:25). In that city, “death shall be no more” (Revelation 21:4), and “no longer will there be anything accursed” (Revelation 22:3).

A city of refuge whose gates never close. That is where the road finally leads.

Scripture never calls Jerusalem a City of Refuge, so this, too, is best held as a reflection rather than a doctrine. But it makes a whole lot of sense when contemplating what Christ did for us there.

Justice and Mercy: One God in Both Testaments

Many people assume the Old Testament shows a God of justice and wrath, and the New Testament shows a God of mercy and love.

This idea is not new.

In the second century, a teacher named Marcion went so far as to claim they were two different gods, and he threw out the Old Testament entirely.

The early church rejected his teaching as heresy, because the Bible never presents God that way.

The Cities of Refuge are one of the clearest proofs. In this single Old Testament law, God is both:

• The Refuge and Protector, who provides a safe place for people who have done wrong and insists that the road to it be kept clear.

  
  

• The Kinsman-Redeemer of blood, who takes every human life seriously and will not let the taking of a life go unanswered.

  
  

He was never one without the other.

When God revealed His own name to Moses, He described Himself as “a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty” (Exodus 34:6–7).

Mercy and justice sit in the same breath.

The Old Testament is full of tender mercy. God pleads with His people, “How can I give you up, O Ephraim?” (Hosea 11:8). He rescues Ruth through a kinsman-redeemer and spares Nineveh, a violent enemy city, when it repents (Jonah 3:10).

And the New Testament takes justice seriously. Jesus warned of judgment more than almost anyone in Scripture, and Paul writes that God “has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness” (Acts 17:31).

Jesus Satisfies Both at Once

This is what makes Christianity so incredibly rational and unique. Though many cultures speak of both justice and mercy in different measures, Christianity allows for both to be fully satisfied.

Where a perfectly holy God can commune again with man, with a debt that is paid in full.

Most systems of belief must choose: either God overlooks wrongdoing, which sacrifices justice, or God punishes it, which leaves no room for mercy. At the cross, God did neither.

He kept both.

Paul explains that God set Jesus forth as a sacrifice “to show his righteousness… so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:26).

Just and the justifier. Justice was fully satisfied because sin was fully paid. Mercy was fully given because the payment was made by Someone else.

The psalmist saw it coming: “Steadfast love and faithfulness meet; righteousness and peace kiss each other” (Psalm 85:10).

That meeting place is a cross just outside the city walls of Jerusalem.

Slow to Anger, Still Just

One phrase appears again and again across the Old Testament: God is “slow to anger.”

Moses heard it at Sinai (Exodus 34:6). David sang it (Psalm 103:8). Joel used it to call Israel home (Joel 2:13). Even Jonah quoted it, complaining that God was too patient with his enemies (Jonah 4:2).

The Cities of Refuge show that patience built right into the law.

God did not wait for a crisis to provide a way of escape. He designed it before the first accident ever happened, placed the cities so no one was too far away, and ordered the roads kept clear.

That is a God who knows our weakness, for “he remembers that we are dust” (Psalm 103:14), and who made room for us before we ever needed it.

Yet His patience is never indifference.

The prophet Nahum holds both truths in one verse: “The LORD is slow to anger and great in power, and the LORD will by no means clear the guilty” (Nahum 1:3).

Peter explains why judgment has not come yet: the Lord “is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).

God’s patience is not a sign that justice does not matter. It is the space He lovingly gives us to reach the gate.

Every day the road stays open is a day of mercy.

The Refugee Is Every One of Us

The man in this story is a picture of every one of us, though perhaps not in the way you would expect.

He had caused real harm, even though he never meant to. In our own ways, so have we: “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

This is not a statement about anyone’s worth.

It is the shared condition of every human heart, and Scripture names it so that none of us has to carry it alone or pretend. He could not undo what had happened, pay his way out, or settle it by his own effort.

Neither can we.

His hope was to go to the place God had provided and remain there until the high priest died.

Ours is the same.

If you are reading this as someone forced to take shelter from the mistakes or wrongs of others, this story speaks to you in a second way too.

The Kinsman-Redeemer is not only the One we come to for mercy. He is also the One who sees what was done to you and will one day set it right. Your losses are not forgotten, and your grief is not too heavy for Him.

The refugee shows what every person needs from God: not mercy instead of justice, or justice instead of mercy, but both at once.

We need justice, because a God who shrugs at evil could never set the world right or answer for the people we have lost. And we need mercy, because the same justice that answers for others would also condemn us. The Cities of Refuge held both.

Jesus fulfills both.

He is the road, so the way is clear. He is the door, so we can come in. He is the Shepherd inside the walls, so we are kept. He is our Kinsman-Redeemer, so the One with every right to judge us has become our family. And He is the High Priest who died and rose again, so we can finally go home.

The gate is still open, and the road is still marked. You do not have to arrive with your story in order or your strength intact.

The invitation is simply to come: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). And for those who have already come, the call is to remain, not inside walls that confine, but in a Person who gives rest.

Abide in Him.

“For you have been a stronghold to the poor, a stronghold to the needy in his distress, a shelter from the storm.” (Isaiah 25:4)