Joshua 20

¹ Yahweh said to Joshua,

² ‘Speak to the Israelites and say to them, “Choose the cities of refuge of which I spoke to you through Moses,

³ towns where a man who has killed accidentally, unwittingly, may find sanctuary; they are to be your refuge from the avenger of blood.

⁴ The man who has killed may seek sanctuary in one of these towns; he must stop at the entrance of the town gate and explain his case to the elders of the place. They shall let him enter the town and assign him a place to live with them.

⁵ If he is pursued by the avenger of blood, they are not to give him up to him, since he has killed his neighbour unwittingly, with no long-cherished hatred against him.

⁶ The man who has killed must remain in that town until he has appeared for judgement before the community, until the death of the high priest then in office. Only then may the man who has killed go back to his own town and his own house, to the town from which he has fled.”‘

⁷ For this purpose they designated Kedesh in Galilee, in the highlands of Naphtali, Shechem in the highlands of Ephraim, and Kiriath-arba, which is now Hebron, in the highlands of Judah.

⁸ Across the Jordan and on the east facing Jericho, in the wilderness on the tableland, they chose Bezer of the tribe of Reuben, Ramoth-gilead of the tribe of Gad, and Golan in Bashan of the tribe of Manasseh.

⁹ These were the towns marked out for all the Israelites and for the stranger living among them, so that any man might find sanctuary there if he had killed accidentally, and might escape the hand of the avenger of blood until he had appeared for judgement before the community.