Numbers 35 · a question people ask
Why did the man slayer have to wait for the high priest to die?
The chapter sets the time in three verses (35:25, 35:28, 35:32) and never gives a reason. Joshua repeats it: "until the death of the high priest that shall be in those days" (Joshua 20:6). What every reading agrees on is what the text says: the time was set by the LORD's law, not by the avenger; the man slayer was safe only inside the city's border (35:26-27); and no ransom could bring him home early (35:32).
How Christians read it
Where Christians differ, Favor sets out the main views side by side and doesn't pick one.
The high priest's death counts for something
Those who hold this view note that the chapter names the high priest by his anointing, "who was anointed with the holy oil" (35:25), and that the anointed priest is the one who "shall make the atonement" for "all the people of the assembly" (Leviticus 16:32-33). They set this beside the chapter's last words, that blood shed in the land needs atonement: "No atonement can be made for the land for the blood that is shed in it, but by the blood of him who shed it" (35:33). On this reading, the death of the anointed high priest closes the matter of the blood the man slayer shed, so he can go home. Some Christians also set this beside Hebrews, which says Jesus shared flesh and blood "that through death he might… deliver all of them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage" (Hebrews 2:14-15), and became "a merciful and faithful high priest" (Hebrews 2:17); Hebrews doesn't cite Numbers 35.
Numbers 35:25 · Numbers 35:33 · Leviticus 16:32-33 · Hebrews 2:14-15 · Hebrews 2:17
A set time, fixed by the LORD
Those who hold this view note that the text gives the high priest's death only as a time: "until the death of the high priest" and "after the death of the high priest" (35:28), and Joshua says the same, "the high priest that shall be in those days" (Joshua 20:6). On this reading the high priest's death is the end point the LORD set for the man slayer's stay, and the chapter doesn't explain it further.
Numbers 35:28 · Joshua 20:6
The verses
““‘You shall take no ransom for him who has fled to his city of refuge, that he may come again to dwell in the land before the death of the priest.”
“He shall dwell in that city until he stands before the congregation for judgment, until the death of the high priest that shall be in those days. Then the man slayer shall return, and come to his own city, and to his own house, to the city he fled from.’””