1The LORD also spoke to Joshua, and said,
2"Speak to the children of Israel, and say, 'Choose for yourselves cities of refuge, the ones I told you about through Moses.'"
3"Then anyone who kills a person by accident, without meaning to, can run there. These cities will be your refuge from the one who comes to avenge the blood."
4When a man runs to one of those cities, he is to stand at the entrance of the city gate and explain his case to the elders of that city. Then they are to take him into the city with them and give him a place, so that he may live among them.
5If the one who comes to avenge the blood chases after him, they must not hand the man over to him. For he struck his neighbour without meaning to, and he had not hated him before.
6He is to live in that city until he stands before the assembly for judgment, and until the death of the high priest who is serving in those days. Then the man who killed may go back and come to his own city and his own house, to the city he ran away from.
7So they set apart Kedesh in Galilee in the hill country of Naphtali, and Shechem in the hill country of Ephraim, and Kirjatharba, which is Hebron, in the hill country of Judah.
8And on the other side of the Jordan, east of Jericho, they gave Bezer in the wilderness on the plain, from the tribe of Reuben, and Ramoth in Gilead, from the tribe of Gad, and Golan in Bashan, from the tribe of Manasseh.
9These were the cities chosen for all the children of Israel, and for the stranger living among them. Anyone who killed a person by accident could run there, and not die at the hand of the one who comes to avenge the blood, until he stood before the assembly.