Joshua 20
1 The LORD spoke to Joshua:
2 “Tell the Israelites: ‘Set aside for yourselves the cities of refuge I told you about through Moses.
3 Anyone who kills a person unintentionally and without knowing what they are doing shall flee there. These cities will be a refuge for you from the blood avenger.
4 They shall flee to one of these cities, stand at the entrance to the city gate, and present their case to the elders of that city. The elders shall take them into the city and provide them a place to live among them.
5 If the blood avenger pursues them, they must not hand the killer over to him, because they struck their neighbor without knowing what they were doing and had not hated them beforehand.
6 They shall live in that city until they stand before the community for judgment, and until the death of the high priest serving in those days. Then the killer may return and go to their own city and home, to the city they fled from.’”
7 They set apart Kedesh in Galilee, in the hill country of Naphtali; Shechem in the hill country of Ephraim; and Kiriath-arba, that is, Hebron, in the hill country of Judah.
8 Across the Jordan, east of Jericho, they designated Bezer in the wilderness, on the plateau, from the tribe of Reuben; Ramoth in Gilead, from the tribe of Gad; and Golan in Bashan, from the tribe of Manasseh.
9 These were the designated cities for all the Israelites and for the resident foreigner living among them. Anyone who killed a person unintentionally could flee there, so as not to die at the hand of the blood avenger before standing before the community.
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