Cities of Refuge Map: the Six Cities and 48 Levitical Cities

A map of the forty-eight cities the Levites received by lot among the tribes, Joshua 21, and the six cities of refuge among them. Each city carries its family and tribe and its verses; where 1 Chronicles 6:54–81 names a city otherwise, its name follows in italic.

The forty-eight fall to four Levitical families, each marked on the map by its own shape and colour: thirteen cities to the sons of Aaron the priests, ten to the rest of Kohath, thirteen to Gershon and twelve to Merari. A site OpenBible.info rates under 700 in 1,000 is marked ‡; thirty-three of the forty-eight are so marked.

The relief and contours come from the Copernicus GLO-30 elevation model, the site positions from the OpenBible.info Bible Geocoding data, and the tribal borders from View.Bible’s Allotment Map, a reconstruction from the boundary towns of Joshua 13–19. Names and verses follow the New King James Version.

Map by View.Bible. Relief from the Copernicus GLO-30 elevation model (ESA, 2021); rivers and streams from OpenStreetMap (© OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL); site positions from OpenBible.info (CC BY 4.0).

The six cities of refuge (Joshua 20:7–8)

West of the Jordan: Kedesh in Galilee (Naphtali), Shechem (Ephraim), Kirjath Arba, that is Hebron (Judah). East of the Jordan: Bezer (Reuben), Ramoth in Gilead (Gad), Golan in Bashan (Manasseh). Anyone who killed a person by accident could flee there from the avenger of blood and live, until he stood before the congregation (Numbers 35:9–15; Joshua 20:1–9).

The Levites’ four families

Thirteen cities to the sons of Aaron the priests, from Judah, Simeon and Benjamin; ten to the rest of Kohath, from Ephraim, Dan and the half-tribe of Manasseh; thirteen to Gershon, from the other half of Manasseh in Bashan, Issachar, Asher and Naphtali; twelve to Merari, from Zebulun, Reuben and Gad (Joshua 21:4–8).

Kartah, not mapped

OpenBible.info’s only proposed site for Kartah (Joshua 21:34) is Kartan’s, in Naphtali, though Kartah was a city of Zebulun. Rather than place it at a site that is not its own, the map leaves it off: forty-seven of the forty-eight cities are shown.

Contested sites

A raised ‡ after a name marks a site OpenBible.info rates under 700 in 1,000: thirty-three of the forty-eight cities. Every site’s score is on page 2 of the PDF.

Joshua 21:36–37 and the Masoretic Text

Joshua 21:36–37, naming Bezer, Jahaz, Kedemoth and Mephaath, are not in the Masoretic Text; the New King James Version keeps them with the Septuagint and the Vulgate, as its note there says (compare 1 Chronicles 6:78–79).

Sources

Every source the site uses: Sources.

How to cite

From View.Bible, Cities of Refuge and the Levites (Joshua 20–21), version 2, https://view.bible/cities-of-refuge-map/, CC BY 4.0.

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