StrongerBible

miqlat

מִקְלָט

HebrewH4733“refuge, asylum”

Appears 20 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Num 35:6Num 35:11Num 35:12Num 35:13Num 35:14Num 35:15Num 35:25Num 35:26Num 35:27Num 35:28Num 35:32Jos 20:2Jos 20:3Jos 21:13Jos 21:21Jos 21:27Jos 21:32Jos 21:381Ch 6:57(42)1Ch 6:67(52)
Root family
Word studyResearch-grademeek-LAHTnoun

What miqlat means

a place of asylum: a city set apart to take in and shelter someone who has killed another person by accident

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintySettled

This word is used in only one setting in the whole Bible: the cities of refuge. After the land was divided, six towns were marked out so that a person who killed someone unintentionally could run there and be safe from the dead person's family, who had the right and duty to avenge the killing. The refuge was not a free pass. The killer had to stand trial, and if the death really was an accident, the refuge city became his protected home until the death of the high priest, when he could finally return to his own land.

The root behind the word carries the idea of taking someone in or receiving them, so a refuge city is best understood as a place that absorbs the fugitive and holds him, rather than simply a hiding spot. That is why the same towns can feel both protective and confining: they shelter the innocent from hot-blooded revenge while keeping a person responsible for a death within bounds until the matter is settled.

The word always appears with or near the word for "city," naming an institution more than a feeling. It is the asylum town itself, the safe place the law provided so that the wrong person would not be killed in the heat of grief.

Num 35:6Num 35:11Num 35:12Num 35:13Num 35:14Num 35:15Num 35:25Num 35:26Num 35:27Num 35:28Num 35:32Jos 20:2

What scholars say about miqlat

The standard lexica (BDB, HALOT, DCH) and the theological dictionaries (NIDOTTE, TDOT) treat מִקְלָט as a place-noun built on the root קלט, and the majority derive that root from a sense of taking in, receiving, or absorbing, well attested in Aramaic, Syriac, and Mishnaic Hebrew, so that the noun means the place where the fugitive is received. A minority connects it to the only biblical verb form, קָלוּט (stunted, drawn-in, Leviticus 22:23), yielding the nuance of a holding or detention place, a line Jacob Milgrom develops as remand rather than simple rescue; the ancient versions point instead toward rescue or flight (the Septuagint's cities of places-of-flight, the Targum's word for rescue), a reading Alexander Rofé favors. Beyond etymology, scholars including Moshe Greenberg, Pamela Barmash, and Jeffrey Stackert have shown that the institution itself is distinctive in the ancient world (restricted to the accidental killer, requiring trial, forbidding ransom, tied to the high priest's death) and that the asylum laws sit in different literary layers (the Covenant Code, Deuteronomy, the Priestly material in Numbers, and the harmonizing text of Joshua 20) with genuinely different theologies of bloodguilt.

Where scholars disagree about miqlat

What the root behind מִקְלָט originally meant, and therefore the nuance the word carries: the data for the root are very thin, so scholars choose between methods rather than between clear cognates.

  • majorityThe root means to take in, receive, or absorb (drawn from Aramaic, Syriac, and Mishnaic Hebrew usage), so a refuge city is the place where the fugitive is received.; HALOT (Koehler-Baumgartner), s.v. קלט, מקלט; BDB, s.v. מִקְלָט; NIDOTTE (VanGemeren, ed.), vol. 3, s.v. קלט / מִקְלָט; TDOT, vol. XIII, s.v. קלט
  • minorityA single underlying sense of drawing in unifies the contracted limb of Leviticus 22:23 with the asylum city, so the refuge is a place of detention or remand where the killer is constrained, not merely sheltered.; Jacob Milgrom, JPS Torah Commentary: Numbers (JPS, 1990), on Numbers 35; Ernest Klein, A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language (Carta, 1987), s.v. קלט
  • minorityThe word carries an older sense of rescue or flight, reflected in the ancient versions (the Septuagint's cities of places-of-flight and the Targum's word for rescue).; Alexander Rofe, "The History of the Cities of Refuge in Biblical Law," in Sara Japhet (ed.), Studies in Bible (Scripta Hierosolymitana 31; Magnes, 1986), 205-39
  • minorityThe contracted-limb verb of Leviticus 22:23 and the take-in sense behind the noun are two unrelated homonymous roots that should not be forced together.; HALOT (Koehler-Baumgartner), s.v. קלט; DCH (Clines), vol. 5, s.v. קלט
In-depth research

This is a research paper, so it may be hard to read without scholarly background. It is useful if you want to dig even deeper into this word.

Sources

  • HALOT (Koehler-Baumgartner), s.v. קלט, מקלטlexicon
  • BDB, s.v. מִקְלָטlexicon
  • DCH (Clines), vol. 5, s.v. מִקְלָטlexicon
  • NIDOTTE (VanGemeren, ed.), vol. 3, s.v. קלט / מִקְלָטtheological-dictionary
  • TDOT, vol. XIII, s.v. קלטtheological-dictionary
  • Jacob Milgrom, JPS Torah Commentary: Numbers (JPS, 1990), on Numbers 35commentary
  • Baruch A. Levine, Numbers 21-36 (Anchor Bible 4A; Doubleday, 2000), on Numbers 35commentary
  • Moshe Greenberg, "The Biblical Conception of Asylum," JBL 78 (1959): 125-32journal-article
  • Pamela Barmash, Homicide in the Biblical World (Cambridge University Press, 2005)monograph
  • Jeffrey Stackert, "Why Does Deuteronomy Legislate Cities of Refuge? Asylum in the Covenant Collection (Exodus 21:12-14) and Deuteronomy (19:1-13)," JBL 125 (2006): 23-49journal-article
  • Alexander Rofe, "The History of the Cities of Refuge in Biblical Law," in Sara Japhet (ed.), Studies in Bible (Scripta Hierosolymitana 31; Magnes, 1986), 205-39journal-article
  • Emanuel Tov, "The Growth of the Book of Joshua in Light of the Evidence of the LXX," in The Greek and Hebrew Bible (Brill, 1999)monograph

AI-generated word study · claude-opus-4-8

All attested forms of מִקְלָט

m s absolute

מִקְלָט, מִּקְלָט

Num 35:11, Num 35:12, Num 35:13, Num 35:14, Num 35:15, Jos 20:3, Num 35:6, Jos 20:2

m s construct

מִקְלַט

Jos 21:13, Jos 21:21, Jos 21:27, Jos 21:32, Jos 21:38

m s construct

מִקְלָטוֹ

Num 35:25, Num 35:26, Num 35:27, Num 35:28, Num 35:32