CHAPTER 20 Jun. 3 
The Cities of Refuge
Yahweh spoke to Joshua saying, 2Speak to the children of Israel saying, ‘Assign the cities of refuge, of which I spoke to you by Moses, 3that the manslayer who kills any person accidentally or unintentionally may flee there. They shall be to you for a refuge from the avenger of blood. 4He shall flee to one of those cities, and shall stand at the entrance of the gate of the city and declare his cause in the ears of the elders of that city. They shall take him into the city with them and give him a place, that he may live among them. 5If the avenger of blood pursue after him, then they shall not deliver up the manslayer into his hand; because he struck his neighbour unintentionally, and didn’t hate him beforehand. 6He shall dwell in that city until he stands before the congregation for judgment, until the death of the high priest that shall be in those days. Then the manslayer shall return, and come to his own city, and to his own house, to the city he fled from’. 7They set apart Kedesh in Galilee in the hill country of Naphtali, Shechem in the hill country of Ephraim, and Kiriath Arba (the same is Hebron) in the hill country of Judah. 8Beyond the Jordan at Jericho eastward, they assigned Bezer in the wilderness in the plain out of the tribe of Reuben, Ramoth in Gilead out of the tribe of Gad, and Golan in Bashan out of the tribe of Manasseh. 9These were the appointed cities for all the children of Israel, and for the alien who lives among them, that whoever kills any person unintentionally might flee there, and not die by the hand of the avenger of blood, until he stands before the congregation.

Commentary

20:4 Heb. 6:18 invites us to see ourselves as this person who had committed sin worthy of death and yet, as it were, without his conscious, wilful desire to do so; and our city of refuge is the Lord Jesus. 
20:6 Final deliverance for the manslayer was given at the death of the High Priest, when his case was judged. This pointed forward to the final freedom achieved for us by Christ’s death, which was in a sense our judgment (Jn. 12:31; 16:11). Christ’s death on the cross is repeatedly presented as our judgment; hence in remembering His death in the breaking of bread we have a foretaste of our future judgment, and are in a sense judged there. 
20:7,8 The cities of refuge were in inaccessible areas- up mountains or in the desert. There had to be a conscious effort to go there, just as we don’t drift into Christ but must take the conscious decision to be baptized into Him, which is the counterpart to entering into the city of refuge (:4).