Joshua 20

¹ Yahweh spoke to Joshua, saying, ² “Speak to the children of Israel, saying, ‘Appoint for yourselves the cities of refuge, of which I spoke to you by Moses, ³ that the manslayer who kills any person accidentally or unintentionally may flee there. They shall be for you a refuge from the avenger of blood. ⁴ He shall flee to one of those cities, and shall stand at the entrance of the gate of the city, and state his case in the ears of the elders of that city. They shall take him into the city to them, and give him a place, that he may dwell among them. ⁵ If the avenger of blood pursues him, then they shall not deliver up the manslayer into his hand; because he struck his neighbor unintentionally, and didn’t hate him before.

⁶ He shall dwell in that city until he stands before the congregation for judgment, until the death of the high priest who shall be in those days. Then the manslayer shall return, and come to his own city, and to his own house, to the city from where he fled.’”

⁷ They appointed Kedesh in Galilee in the hill country of Naphtali, and Shechem in the hill country of Ephraim, and Kiriath Arba (the same is Hebron) in the hill country of Judah. ⁸ Beyond the Jordan at Jericho eastward, they appointed Bezer in the wilderness on the plain out of the tribe of Reuben, and Ramoth in Gilead out of the tribe of Gad, and Golan in Bashan out of the tribe of Manasseh. ⁹ These were the appointed cities for all the children of Israel, and for the foreigner who lives among them, that whoever kills any person unintentionally might flee there, and not die by the hand of the avenger of blood, until he stood before the congregation.