[1] Yahweh spoke to Joshua, saying, [2] Speak to the children of Israel,
saying, Assign you the cities of refuge, whereof I spoke to you by Moses,
[3] that the manslayer who kills any person unwittingly [and] unawares may
flee there: and they shall be to you for 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 declare his cause in the ears of the
elders of that city; and 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
pursue after him, then they shall not deliver up the manslayer into his
hand; because he struck his neighbor unawares, and didn`t hate him before.
[6] He shall dwell in that city, until he stand before the congregation for
judgment, until the death of the high priest that shall be in those days:
then shall the manslayer return, and come to his own city, and to his own
house, to the city from whence he fled. [7] They set apart 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 assigned Bezer in
the wilderness in 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 stranger who sojourns among them, that whoever kills
any person unwittingly might flee there, and not die by the hand of the
avenger of blood, until he stood before the congregation.
