The ancient world knew the right of sanctuary. A murderer who reached a temple's altar could cling to the horns of the altar and claim divine protection. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan shuts this loophole in Israelite law. "If a man come maliciously upon his neighbour to kill him with craft, though the priests are ministering at My altar, thence thou shalt take him, and slay him with the sword" (Exodus 21:14).
The Hebrew reads simply from My altar you shall take him. The Targum extends the scene — though the priests are ministering at My altar. Imagine the tableau: the smoke rising, the priests mid-ritual, the fugitive clinging to the stone in tears. And the Torah says: pull him out. Even now. Even here.
This is a revolutionary legal principle. Premeditated murder has no asylum. The altar protects the manslayer (the accidental killer), who can flee to a city of refuge and live. But the one who killed maliciously... with craft — with planning, with deceit — finds no shelter, not even at the holiest site in the nation.
Why? Because the altar exists to forgive the forgivable. Accidental sin, momentary failure, the thousand unintended harms of a human life — the altar covers them all. But premeditated murder is the one crime that cannot be washed clean by sacrifice. It severs the image of God in the victim, and the blood on the ground cries out (Genesis 4:10) until it receives its due.
The Targum's phrase slay him with the sword completes the thought. Justice requires that he be removed from the sacred space and executed under civil jurisdiction. The altar will not be profaned by an unrepentant killer, and the murderer will not escape consequence by claiming holy ground.
The takeaway: there is no hiding place from deliberate evil, not even in a sanctuary. Some sins must be answered in full.