Deuteronomy 19:1-21
19 “When your God Jehovah exterminates the nations whose county your God Jehovah is giving you, and you succeed to their possession and live in their cities and houses,
2 you shall set apart three cities in your country that your God Jehovah is giving you to take possession of;
3 you shall prepare the road, and shall divide into three parts you territory that your God Jehovah bestows on you; and there shall be a chance for every homicide to flee to them.
4 And this is the definition of the homicide who is to flee to them and have his life spared: ‘he who strikes his neighbor down without knowing it, not having previously hated him.’
5 And he who goes into the badlands with his neighbor to cut timber, and his hand takes a swing with the ax to cut down a tree and the head slips off from the handle and hits his neighbor and causes his death, shall flee to one of these cities an have his life spared.
6 That the blood-reclaimer may not pursue the homicide while his heart is hot, and overtake him because the distant is too great, and strike to his life, when there was no capital case against him because he had not previously hated him,
7 this is the reason why I give you the command ‘You shall set apart three cities’;
8 and if your God Jehovah enlarges your territory as he swore to your fathers and gives you all the country he promised your fathers to give,
9 because you take care to live up to all this commandment that I am enjoining on you today, loving your God Jehovah and walking in his ways evermore, then you shall add three cities more to these three,
10 and not have innocent blood shed in your country that your God Jehovah is giving you as your estate, which would be a bloodstain in you.
11 “And when there shall be a man who hates his neighbor and lies in wait for him and stands up against him and strikes at his life so that he dies, and he flees to one of these cities,
12 the elders of his city shall send and take him from there and give him into the hands of the blood-reclaimer to die.
13 Your eye shall not have mercy on him, but you shall rout out the innocent blood from Israel, and it will be well for you.
14 * “You shall not displace your neighbor’s boundary-mark, which men of the old time located, in your estate which you are to enter upon in the country your God Jehovah is giving you to take possession of.
15 “One witness shall not appear against a man for any crime or misdemeanor in regard to any misdeed that one may commit: a point shall be established on the word of two witnesses or of three.
16 When a malicious witness appears against a man to testify wrongfully against him,
17 and the two men who are at issue stand before Jehovah, before the priests and judges that there shall be in those days,
18 and the judges look into it thoroughly and find that the witness is a false witness, he has testified to a lie against his brother,
19 you shall do to him as he designed to do to his brother, and rout out the mischief from among you;
20 and the rest shall hear of it and be afraid, and never again do such a wicked thing among you.
21 And your eye shall not have mercy: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, arm for arm, leg for leg.
Footnotes
^ 19:14 Or assigned
