The cities of refuge
1 Yahweh said to Joshua,
2 “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: Choose the cities of refuge about which I told you through Moses,
3 towns where a person who kills someone accidentally may find safety; they are to be your refuge from the dead per son’s relative who is looking for revenge.
4 The man who has killed may run away to one of these towns; he shall appear at the entrance to the town and explain his case to the elders of the place. They shall welcome him and assign him a place to live among them.
5 If the person who wants revenge follows him there, they are not to hand him over, since he has killed his neighbor accidentally and not out of hatred.
6 The man who has killed must remain in that town until he has received a public trial and until the death of the high priest then in office. Only then may the man who has killed go back to his own town and his own house, to the town from which he has escaped.”
7 For this purpose they set aside Ke desh in Galilee, in the hill country of Naph tali, Shechem in the highlands of Ephraim, and Kiriath-arba, which is now Hebron, in the hill country of Judah.
8 East of the Jordan, in the desert east of Jericho, they chose Bezer in the territory of Reuben, Ramoth-gilead in the territory of Gad, and Golan in Bashan in the territory of Manasseh.
9 These were the towns set aside for all the Israelites and for any foreigner living among them, where anyone who had killed a person accidentally could find safety from the dead person’s relative looking for re venge, until he had been given a public trial.