1 When the LORD your God has cut off the nations whose land he is giving you, and you have driven them out and settled in their towns and houses,
2 set apart three cities for yourself within the land the LORD your God is giving you to possess.
3 Build roads for yourself, and divide into three districts the land the LORD your God is giving you to inherit, so that anyone who kills a person can flee there.
4 This is the rule for the one who kills someone and flees there to save his life: he struck his neighbor unintentionally, without having hated him before.
5 For example, a man goes into the forest with his neighbor to cut wood, and as his hand swings the axe to fell a tree, the head flies off the handle and hits his neighbor, who dies. That man may flee to one of these cities and live.
6 Otherwise the avenger of blood, in the heat of his anger, might chase the killer, overtake him because the road is long, and strike him dead, though he did not deserve to die, since he had not hated his neighbor before.
7 That is why I command you to set apart three cities for yourself.
8 If the LORD your God enlarges your borders as he swore to your fathers, and gives you the whole land he promised to give them,
9 provided you carefully keep this whole commandment I give you today, to love the LORD your God and to walk in his ways at all times, then add three more cities to these three.
10 In this way innocent blood will not be shed in the land the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, and you will not bear the guilt of bloodshed.
11 But if a man hates his neighbor, lies in wait for him, attacks him, and strikes him a fatal blow, and then flees to one of these cities,
12 the elders of his town are to send for him, have him brought back from there, and hand him over to the avenger of blood to die.
13 Show him no pity. You must purge from Israel the guilt of innocent blood, so that it may go well with you.
14 Do not move your neighbor's boundary marker, set up by those who came before, in the inheritance you will receive in the land the LORD your God is giving you to possess.
15 One witness is not enough to convict a man of any wrongdoing or any sin he may have committed. A charge must be established on the word of two or three witnesses.
16 If a hostile witness comes forward to accuse a man of a crime,
17 the two parties to the dispute are to stand before the LORD, in front of the priests and the judges who serve at that time.
18 The judges are to investigate thoroughly, and if the witness proves to be a lying witness who has accused his brother falsely,
19 do to him what he meant to do to his brother. In this way you will purge the evil from your midst.
20 The rest of the people will hear of it and be afraid, and such an evil thing will never again be done among you.
21 Show no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.