19. A member of the dead person’s family can chase you and kill you.
20-21. “You might hit someone with your hand or push someone or throw something at them and kill them. If you did that from hate, you are a murderer, and you must be killed. A member of the dead person’s family can chase you and kill you.
22. “You might accidentally kill someone, maybe by pushing or by accidentally hitting them with a tool or weapon.
23. Perhaps you threw a rock that was large enough to kill, but it hit someone you didn’t see and killed them. You didn’t plan to kill anyone. You didn’t hate the person you killed—it was only an accident.
24. If that happens, the community must decide what to do. The court must decide if a member of the dead person’s family can kill you.
25. If the community decides to protect you from the dead person’s family, the community must take you back to your city of safety. You must stay there until the official high priest dies.
26-27. “You must never go outside the limits of your city of safety. If you do and if a member of the dead person’s family catches you and kills you, that family member will not be guilty of murder.
28. Whoever accidentally killed someone must stay in their city of safety until the high priest dies. After the high priest dies, that person can go back to their own land.
29. These rules will be the law forever in all the towns of your people.
30. “A killer should be put to death as a murderer only if there are witnesses. No one can be put to death if there is only one witness.
31. “A murderer must be put to death. Don’t take money to change the punishment. That murderer must be killed.
32. “If a person killed someone and then ran to one of the cities of safety, don’t take money to let that person go home. That person must stay in that city until the high priest dies.
33. “Don’t let your land be polluted with innocent blood. If a person murders someone, the only payment for that crime is that the murderer must be killed! There is no other payment that will free the land from that crime.
34. I am the Lord. I will be living in your country with the Israelites, so don’t make it unclean with the blood of innocent people.”