1When the LORD your God has destroyed the nations whose land he is giving you and you have driven them out and settled in their towns and houses,
2set aside three cities for yourselves in the land the LORD your God is giving you to possess.
3Determine the distances and divide the land your God is giving you as an inheritance into three parts, so that anyone who kills someone may be able to flee there.
4This is the rule concerning anyone who kills a person and flees there to save their life — someone who kills a neighbor accidentally, without prior hostility.
5For example, a man may go into the forest with his neighbor to cut wood. As he swings his ax to fell a tree, the head flies off the handle and strikes his neighbor and kills him. That man may flee to one of these cities and save his life.
6Otherwise, the avenger of blood might pursue him in a rage and catch him if the distance is too great, and kill him even though he deserves no death sentence, since there was no prior hostility.
7That is why I command you to set aside three cities for yourselves.
8If the LORD your God enlarges your territory, as he swore to your ancestors, and gives you all the land he promised them,
9because you are careful to follow all these commands I give you today — to love the LORD your God and to walk always in obedience to him — then you are to set aside three more cities.
10Do this so that innocent blood will not be shed in your land, which the LORD your God is giving you as your inheritance, and so that you will not be guilty of bloodshed.
11But if a man hates his neighbor and lies in wait for him, assaults him, and kills him, and then flees to one of these cities,
12the elders of his town shall send for him, bring him back from the city, and hand him over to the avenger of blood to die.
13Show him no pity. You must purge from Israel the guilt of shedding innocent blood, so that things may go well with you.
14Do not move your neighbor's boundary stone set up by your predecessors in the inheritance you receive in the land the LORD your God is giving you to possess.
15One witness is not enough to convict anyone accused of any crime or offense they may have committed. A matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.
16If a malicious witness comes forward and accuses someone of a crime,
17the two people involved in the dispute must stand in the presence of the LORD before the priests and judges who are in office at the time.
18The judges must investigate carefully, and if the witness proves to be a liar — giving false testimony against a fellow Israelite —
19do to him what he intended to do to his brother. You must purge the evil from among you.
20The rest of the people will hear about this and be afraid, and never again will such an evil thing be done among you.
21Show no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.