1. “When Yahweh your God has exterminated the nations concerning whom Yahweh your God is giving to you their land, and you have dispossessed them, and you have settled in their towns and in their houses,
2. you shall set apart three cities for you in the midst of your land that Yahweh your God is giving to you to take possession of it.
3. You shall prepare the roads for yourselves, and you shall divide the regions of your land into thirds that Yahweh your God gives you as a possession, so that it will be available for any manslayer to flee there.
4. “Now this is the case of the manslayer who may flee there and live there who has killed his neighbor unintentionally, and he did not hate him previously.
5. For example, when somebody goes with his neighbor into the forest to cut wood, and the iron head slips from the handle of the tool and strikes his neighbor and he dies, then he may flee to one of these cities, and so he may live.
6. He does this lest the avenger of blood might pursue after the killer, because he is hot with anger and he overtakes him, because it is a long distance to the city of refuge, and so he kills him, but he did not deserve a death sentence, because he was not hating him before.
7. Therefore I am commanding you, saying, ‘You shall set apart three cities.’
8. Then if Yahweh your God enlarges your territory just as he swore to your ancestors and gives to you all the land that he promised to give to your ancestors,
9. then if you diligently observe this entire commandment that I am commanding you today by loving Yahweh your God and by going in his ways at all times, then you shall add three more cities for yourselves to these three.
10. Do this so that innocent blood will not be shed in the midst of your land that Yahweh your God is giving to you as an inheritance and thereby bloodguilt would be on you.
11. But if someone hates his neighbor and lies in wait for him and rises up against him and murders him, and the murderer flees to one of these cities,
12. then the elders of his city shall send and take him from there, and they shall give him into the hand of the avenger of blood, and he shall be put to death.
13. Your eye shall not take pity on him, and you shall purge the guilt of innocent blood from Israel, so that good will be directed toward you.
14. “You shall not move the boundary marker of your neighbor that former generations set up on your property in the land that Yahweh your God is giving to you to take possession of it.
15. The testimony of a single witness may not be used to convict with respect to any crime and for any wrongdoing in any offense that a person committed; on the evidence of two witnesses or on the evidence of three witnesses a charge shall be sustained.
16. If a malicious witness gets up to accuse anyone to testify against him falsely,
17. then the two men to whom the legal dispute pertains shall stand before Yahweh, before the priests and the judges who are in office in those days.
18. Then judges shall make a thorough inquiry, and if it turns out that the witness is a false witness and he testified falsely against his brother,
19. then you shall do to him as he meant to do to his brother, and so you shall purge the evil from your midst.
20. And the rest shall hear and shall fear, and they shall not continue to do such a thing again as this evil thing in your midst.
21. You must show no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.”