God's laws concerning death, murder, and war Deuteronomy 19: 3, 11-12 and 20: 11-13)

You must choose three of your towns to be Safe Towns. Divide the land into three regions with one Safe Town near the middle of each, so that a Safe Town can be easily reached from anywhere in your land. Then, if one of you accidently kills someone, you can run to a Safe Town adn find protection from being put to death. But you must not have been angrey with the person you killed. But what if you really do commit murder? Suppose one of you hates a neighbor. So you wait in a deserted place, kill the neighbor, and run to a Safe Town. If trhat hapens, the leadeers of your town must send messengers to bring you from the Safe Town. They will hand you over to one of the victim's relatives, who will put you to death. If you attack a town that is far from you land, offer peace to the people who live there. If they surrender, they will become your forced labor. But if they reject your offer of peace then after the LORD helps you capture it, kill all the men.
In civil matters, God does not impose the death penalty on accidental deaths with no heart motive to kill. Instead he protects the slayer so that innocent blood does not get shed in the land of inheritance. Whenever the motive is murder, God always imposes captial punishment. Notice that he puts control in the hands of the families and not any government. The elders are to turn the murder over to the families of the victim. In the cases of warfare, God either wants the foreign people to be servants of the chosen people or to rid them of their existance so that they do not sway the devotion to the one true God.
Daily Prayer: Lord, I know that you value all life, yet you are also a God of justice. In your economy, rules are not made to be broken. Instead they are made for our benefit so that I live a suitabale life before you who is the God of all men. Teach me to love your law, because it reveals the heart of God. Amen.