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.”