Deuteronomy 19

The Voice

19 Moses: When the Eternal your God has destroyed the nations whose land He’s going to give you, when you’ve driven them out and have settled in their cities and are living in their houses, ^2-3 then designate three cities of refuge for yourselves in the land He is giving you to live in. Divide your territory into three parts, locate one city centrally in each part, and measure the roads to each of them. That way a person who kills someone accidentally can escape to one of these cities and be safe from revenge.

⁴ This is the kind of person I’m talking about: someone who kills a friend unintentionally, when there was no grudge between them, ⁵ such as when two friends go into the forest together to chop wood, and one of them swings an ax to cut a tree, and the ax head slips off the handle, hits his friend, and kills him. A person such as he can flee to one of these cities and be safe from revenge. ⁶ Otherwise, if the distance to the nearest city of refuge is too great, one of the relatives of the friend who was killed is going to feel honor-bound to avenge the dead man’s blood, and he’ll catch up with him and kill him while he’s still furious about his relative’s death. This wouldn’t be right because the man slaughterer didn’t deserve the death sentence. There was no grudge between these friends—the death was accidental. ⁷ That’s why I’m commanding you to designate these three cities for yourselves. ^8-9 Now if you carefully obey the command I’m giving you today, to love the Eternal your God and always do as He wishes, then He will expand your territory as He promised your ancestors; He’ll give you all the land He told your ancestors He’d give them. If that happens, then designate three more cities for yourselves, besides the first three. ¹⁰ That way no innocent blood will be shed in the land He is giving you to live in, and as a nation you won’t have any bloodguilt just because a city of refuge was too far away.

¹¹ But someone who does hate another person, who ambushes and kills that person can’t escape revenge by fleeing to one of these cities. ¹² The elders of his city must send representatives to bring the killer back and turn him over to the blood-avenger, the relative of the murder victim who will kill him. ¹³ Don’t show any pity! You must remove the stain of innocent blood from Israel, so that everything will go well for you.

¹⁴ Don’t steal land from your neighbor by moving the boundary marker your ancestors put in place. Each person’s property is an inheritance from the Eternal, who’s giving you this land to live in.

¹⁵ The testimony of a single witness is not sufficient to convict a person of a crime or to find someone guilty of doing something wrong. Every charge must be confirmed by two or three witnesses.^{[a] 16} If one person accuses another of some crime, and you suspect it’s being done out of malice, ¹⁷ bring the two people involved into the Eternal’s presence at the sanctuary. Present their case to the priests and the judges who are serving on the tribunal at the time. ¹⁸ The judges will conduct a careful investigation. If it turns out that the witness was lying and accused the other Israelite maliciously, ^19-21 then do to the witness exactly what he wanted done to the other person. Don’t show any pity! If he wanted the other person killed, then kill him; if he wanted his eye put out or a tooth knocked out or a hand or foot cut off, then do that to him.^[b] This will expel the wicked from your own community. Everyone else will hear what happens and be afraid to do the same thing themselves, so none of you will ever do such an evil thing to each other again.