Numbers 34, 35

God must be feeling pretty good about His chances for defeating the Canaanites because He carves up the land before the battle has begun. Now that's chutzpah!

So with that, God declares that the southern boundary of Canaan runs from from the Dead Sea to south of Scorpion Pass, then on to Zin and south of Kadesh Barnea. It continues to Hazar Addar, then on to Azmon, where it joins the Wadi of Egypt. It terminates at the Mediterranean Sea.

The western boundary is the Mediterranean Sea.

The northern boundary runs from the Mediterranean Sea to Mount Hor and continues on to Lebo Hamath, Zedad, and Ziphron, ending at Hazar Enan.

The eastern boundary snakes from Hazar Enan to Shepham. From there it continues on to Riblah, on the east side of Ain, and down to the slopes east of the Sea of Galilee, and across the bank of the Jordan, finally terminating at the Dead Sea.

God then appoints Eleazar and Joshua to divide the land among the nine and a half tribes--evidently two and a half tribes claimed land on the east side of Jordan last chapter, not just two; must have missed that--with input from one member of each of the tribes. Bible-history.com depicts the map like this:

So that's settled, right? God has spoken so everybody's cool with this? It would be preposterous to argue with something so plainly rendered. Anyone who disagrees should speak up now while the floor is open to public comments. No one? We're all good? Excellent. The matter is resolved for all time. Let's move on.

Now that the overall geography has been nailed down, God carves out 48 towns for the Levites to live in, divided proportionately to the size of the each tribe's land; in other words, the larger the individual tribe’s land, the more Levite towns will be founded there. (The Levites, you may recall, are the caretakers of the tabernacle and cannot own any land. One assumes they will rent in the cities.) God also stipulates that each town be surrounded on four sides by pastureland extending from the town a total of 3,000 cubits, which works out to be about 800 acres. But I'm not so good at math; suffice to say, it's seems like a decent amount of land.

Six of the towns are designated as refuges for someone who has killed another person accidentally. Gotta have that, especially these days when it's so difficult not to accidentally kill someone. That happens all the time. The refuges exist to protect the accused from angry mobs, so that the accused may live to stand trial. That's pretty cool.

But those who kill purposefully aren't so lucky. They are put to death without trial. The lesson here is if you ever find yourself accused of murder, it's best to claim it was an accident.

And here's an odd twist: if the accidental killer leaves his city of refuge before being judged, the "avenger of blood"--presumably the one who was most wronged by the death--is allowed to kill him without himself being labeled a murderer. Given the options, house arrest isn't looking so bad.

Also, a murderer can only be convicted under the testimony of two witnesses, not just one. Hear that Law & Order: SVU?

After all that, the important thing to understand is that any bloodshed pollutes the land. The really important thing to understand is that the land can only be made clean again by the blood of the one who shed the blood in the first place.

So the cycle of violence continues.