The Devil's Dictionary: Refuge

REFORM

REFUSAL

REFUGE

-n.

Anything assuring protection to one in peril. Moses and Joshua provided six cities of refuge - Bezer, Golan, Ramoth, Kadesh, Schekem and Hebron - to which one who had taken life inadvertently could flee when hunted by relatives of the deceased. This admirable expedient supplied him with wholesome exercise and enabled them to enjoy the pleasures of the chase; whereby the soul of the dead man was appropriately honored by observations akin to the funeral games of early Greece.