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¹ And Yahweh spoke to Joshua, saying,² Speak to the sons of Israel, saying, Assign for yourselves the cities of refuge, whereof I spoke to you by Moses,³ that the manslayer that kills any person unwittingly [and] unawares may flee there: and they shall be to you for a refuge from the avenger of blood.⁴ And he shall flee to one of those cities, and shall stand at the entrance of the gate of the city, and declare his cause in the ears of the elders of that city; and they shall take him into the city to them, and give him a place, that he may dwell among them.⁵ And if the avenger of blood pursues after him, then they shall not deliver up the manslayer into his hand; because he smote his neighbor unawares, and did not hate him formerly.⁶ And he shall dwell in that city, until he stands before the congregation for judgment, until the death of the high priest that shall be in those days: then the manslayer shall return, and come to his own city, and to his own house, to the city from where he fled.

⁷ And they set apart Kedesh in Galilee in the hill-country of Naphtali, and Shechem in the hill-country of Ephraim, and Kiriath-arba (the same is Hebron) in the hill-country of Judah.⁸ And beyond the Jordan at Jericho eastward, they assigned Bezer in the wilderness in the plain out of the tribe of Reuben, and Ramoth in Gilead out of the tribe of Gad, and Golan in Bashan out of the tribe of Manasseh.⁹ These were the appointed cities for all the sons of Israel, and for the stranger that sojourns among them, that whoever kills any person unwittingly might flee there, and not die by the hand of the avenger of blood, until he stands before the congregation.