Deuteronomy 19

¹When the Lord your God cuts off the nations whose land the Lord your God is giving to you, and you dispossess them and dwell in their cities and in their houses --

²You shall set apart three cities for yourself in the midst of your land that the LORD your God is giving you to possess.

³You shall prepare for yourself the road, and you shall divide into three parts the territory of your land that the LORD your God gives you as an inheritance, so that any manslayer may flee there.

⁴And this is the case of the killer who may flee there and live: the one who strikes his neighbor without intent, he who was not hostile toward him previously.

⁵as when a man goes with his neighbor into the forest to chop wood, and his hand swings the axe to cut the tree, and the iron slips from the wood and strikes his neighbor so that he dies -- he shall flee to one of these cities and live.

⁶lest the avenger of blood pursue the manslayer while his heart is hot and overtake him, for the road is long, and he strike him fatally, when there is for him no judgment of death, since he did not hate him previously.

⁷Therefore I am commanding you, saying: you shall set apart three cities for yourself.

⁸And if the LORD your God enlarges your territory, as he swore to your fathers, and gives you all the land that he promised to give to your fathers,

⁹If you keep all this commandment to do it, which I am commanding you today, to love the LORD your God and to walk in his ways all the days, then you shall add for yourself three more cities in addition to these three.

¹⁰And innocent blood shall not be shed in the midst of your land that the Lord your God is giving to you as an inheritance, lest bloodguilt come upon you.

¹¹But if a man hates his neighbor and lies in wait for him and rises against him and strikes him mortally so that he dies, and he flees to one of these cities,

¹²then the elders of his city shall send and fetch him from there and hand him over to the avenger of blood, and he shall die.

¹³Your eye shall not pity him; you shall purge the blood of the innocent from Israel, and it shall go well with you.

¹⁴You shall not remove your neighbor's boundary that the former ones established, in your inheritance that you shall inherit in the land that the Lord your God is giving you to possess.

¹⁵A single witness shall not stand against a man for any crime or any offense, for any sin that he may commit; on the testimony of two witnesses or on the testimony of three witnesses a matter shall stand.

¹⁶If a malicious witness rises up against a man to testify against him of rebellion,

¹⁷then the two men who have the dispute shall stand before the LORD, before the priests and the judges who are in office in those days.

¹⁸And the judges shall make thorough inquiry, and if the witness is a false witness who has testified falsely against his brother,

¹⁹Then you shall do to him as he had plotted to do to his brother, and you shall purge the evil from your midst.

²⁰And those who remain shall hear and be afraid, and shall never again do such an evil thing as this among you.

²¹And your eye shall not pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.