Fugitive

The word "fugitive" translates several Hebrew terms in the Old Testament. After Cain's murder of Abel, God pronounced that he would be "a fugitive and a vagabond" (n'a, a wanderer) in the earth, separated from both God's presence and the society of settled humanity (Genesis 4:12, 14). In Judges 12:4, the Gileadites used "fugitive" as a taunt against Ephraim — the Gileadites called the Ephraimites "fugitives of Ephraim" before identifying them by the famous password "Shibboleth" and killing those who could not pronounce it correctly. In 2 Kings 25:11, the word describes those who fled from Jerusalem at its fall to Babylon.

Cities of refuge in the Mosaic law (Numbers 35; Deuteronomy 19; Joshua 20) provided an official legal status for those who had accidentally killed someone and needed protection from the avenger of blood — a form of regulated asylum that distinguished the unintentional killer from the deliberate murderer. The fugitive who reached a city of refuge before being overtaken was entitled to a hearing and, if innocent of premeditated murder, to protection within the city until the death of the high priest. This institution reflects a careful legal distinction in Israelite law between manslaughter and murder.