June 21, 2019: Day 55 – Joshua 21

So in this chapter we find the families of the priestly class who were kind of assigned to towns within the land that the Lord had given to the other families.  They were not given land, which we saw underlined a number of times that the family of Levi, the priestly class, would not receive land, but rather towns in which they were supposed to dwell.  The assumption is that in these towns that they were given they were to establish the temples, the places of worship, a place where God would be glorified.  Remember, we do not have the temple just yet, that is going to come later, so regionally they had to worship God in some place.  Those places would have been the towns where the priests resided, at least logically it makes sense.

Notice also that all of the towns of refuge, where people were allowed to go in order to be protected by the law, were given to the Levitical, the priestly families as described in this chapter.  So it means that wherever people had to flee there would definitely be a pastor, or a rabbi, in that town that they would be able to visit and see.  This is very, very significant and forward thinking.  It wasn’t like these sanctuary cities were set up randomly.  They were set up with the thinking that the people who are going to be using the sanctuary cities would need spiritual and emotional support.