MATOT-MAS’EI: NO VIGILANTE RULE – Towards an Understanding of Go’el ha-Dam

Of all the 613 commandments of the Torah, few are as little understood as that concerning the unintentional manslayer and the city of refuge to which he is to flee. The misunderstanding especially centres around the figure the Torah calls the go’el ha-dam, woefully mistranslated by most as “the avenger of blood”, usually a next-of-kin of the slain from whose wrath the manslayer flees to the closest city of refuge where he will be safe. In actual fact the word nekama, revenge, does not feature anywhere in connection with this mitsva.

 If not an avenger, then who and what is the go’el ha-dam?

A good starting-point to try to gain some insight into this seemingly inscrutable mitsva is the first manslaughter in human history – the killing of Abel by Cain. We hesitate to call it “murder” only because Cain was not subject to the death penalty as are murderers even according to the Noahide (Universal) code. While Cain would have been aware in theory that murder was evil and wrong, he was neither warned about it nor aware which blows would be lethal. As the Midrash says “he had no-one from whom to learn”. (Maybe this is the meaning of Cain’s defence [Gen. 4:9] lo yada’ti ha-shomer akhi anokhi. Not so much an attitude of defiance as is normally translated “I didn’t know – am I my brother’s guardian!” Rather “I didn’t know that I had to be the guardian of my brother [by being extra-careful about the severity of my blows”]). Therefore Cain was judged as an unintentional manslayer and subject to exile.

Since there were no cities of refuge at that time to which he could flee, no-one had the status of go’el ha-dam with permission to kill him (4:15). Thus the blood of the victim, Abel, remained horribly and shockingly unrequited. This is why G‑D thunders at Cain: “The blood of your brother screams out to me from the ground!” (4:10). As R’ Samson Rafael Hirsch explains: “the earth itself demands that justice be executed on one who destroys a man”

We are now closer to an understanding of go’el ha-dam. Ge’ula which we translate as “redemption” actually means “to bring someone or something from a fettered state – subjugation, imprisonment, pain – to an unfettered state of being: freedom, relief, emancipation”. Bearing in mind R’ Hirsch’s comments in the Cain and Abel episode, we can now understand the function of the go’el ha-dam: to grant relief and respite to the blood of the victim screaming from the depths of the earth.

This is light years from vengeance and vigilantism. In the Talmud (Makkot 12a) there is a remarkable dispute based on an ambiguous phrase in Numbers 35:27 whether it is (a) a mitsva (b) merely permissible or (c) an offence for the go’el ha-dam to kill the manslayer if he ventures outside the city of refuge. The last opinion, that of Mar Zutra, is later clarified as applying only “until he stands before the assembly (tribunal) for judgement” (Num. 35:12). Then, if found guilty of manslaughter, the perpetrator by wilfully and brazenly stepping outside the city of refuge subjects himself to the penalty of death by agency of the court and the go’el ha-dam is merely acting as an emissary of the beit din to carry out the sentence. There is not here even a scintilla of a suggestion of vengeance.

Similarly if the perpetrator is judged to be a wilful murderer (as opposed to a negligent manslayer) and he illicitly escaped to the city of refuge, the go’el ha-dam may execute him there – again as an agent of the court.

What of the Torah’s attitude to the go’el ha-dam killing the manslayer while en route to the city of refuge? A passage in Sefer Devarim (Deut. 19:6) will shed light on this question. “Lest (pen) the go’el ha-dam will chase after the manslayer, for his heart his hot, and he will overtake him … and strike him mortally – and there is no judgement of death on him.” While some rabbinic opinion refers this latter phrase to the go’el hadam, the straightforward meaning upheld by a consensus of our Sages applies it to the manslayer. Since “there was no judgement of death on him”, i.e. the Sanhedrin had not pronounced a sentence, the go’el ha-dam ought not to have taken the law into his own hands and killed him. This is the implication of the negative word pen, lest.

A clearer picture now begins to emerge. The go’el ha-dam is representative of an attitude the Torah regards as morally essential in the face of avoidable loss of life, namely that of outrage that innocent blood has needlessly been shed. This thesis is reinforced by the Talmud (Sanhedrin 45b) which declares that if there is no go’el ha-dam the beit din must appoint one! Under no circumstances is a go’el ha-dam to act as a vigilante but even if the conditions are such that the go’el ha-dam is unable to perform the function of beit din agent, nevertheless an expression of a sense of moral outrage from an individual functioning as a go’el ha-dam needs to be present.

Thus the institution of the go’el ha-dam is a lesson in how we should all react in the face of wanton bloodshed, namely to want to redeem the innocent blood from its state of crying out from the earth to the heavens that nobody cares. This can and indeed must be done without an act of vengeance; it is enough that we express our outrage in terms of sufficient moral indignation to make it crystal-clear that the perpetrator should feel the pain of the one whose life he took.

We live in an age where life is cheap. Every day the news broadcasts incidents of loss of life on a mass scale in various flashpoints throughout the globe. Sometimes the story will be sandwiched somewhere between the political and the financial segments – or between the weather and sports reports. We are so inured that we barely give a krechts.

Comes along the Torah-institution of the go’el ha-dam and infuses us with a much-needed wake-up call. The taking of human life, whether deliberate, negligent or accidental, is a calamity. The blood of the victim is screaming to the heavens from the grave. We can redeem that blood by expressing our outrage and demonstrating that we do care!