The law of Moses accordingly recognises the Avenger of Blood, (Numb. xxxv., &c.)
But the custom was liable to great abuses, which were apt to make it a step backwards instead of forwards in morality and civilization. (1.) The same revenge was taken for blood however shed, whether wilfully or accidentally, which confounded men’s notion of crime, and in fact multiplied murders. (2.) When covetousness overcame revenge, and the slain kinsman was not very dear, a sum of money (called by our German ancestors the wehrgeld) was taken for his blood instead of the blood of the slayer; and this practice grew into a regular system, which destroyed the distinction between crime and civil injury, took away the sanctity of human life, the foundation-stone of civilization, and moreover sharpened barbarous divisions of class, since the price of a man’s blood was assessed in the tariff according to his rank. (3.) Revenge became hereditary, and blood feuds arose between family and family or clan and clan, which filled the world with slaughter. Such blood feuds were common in the Highlands while the old clans existed, and they are still common among the wild tribes of Syria and in other parts of the East.
Now (1) the law of Moses expressly distinguishes wilful murder from accidental homicide, and confines the office of the Avenger of Blood to wilful murder. “And if he smite him with an instrument of iron, so that he die, he is a murderer: the murderer shall surely be put to death…. Or if he smite him with a hand weapon of wood, wherewith he may die, and he die, he
