1“When the LORD your God has cut off the nations, whose land the LORD your God gives you, and you succeed them, and dwell in their cities, and their houses, 2You must set apart three cities within your land the LORD your God gives you. 3You shall survey and divide the land, which the LORD your God gives you to inherit, into three parts, so that every person who kills a person may flee to one of those three cities of refuge. 4This is the rule for of the one who flees there, to live in safety: Whoever kills his neighbor unintentionally, whom he had no malice toward; 5Such as when a man goes into the forest with his neighbor to cut wood, and swings the axe to cut down a tree, and the head slips from the helve, and strikes his neighbor, so that he dies; he shall flee to one of those three cities, and live in safety: 6Otherwise, an avenger of the blood might pursue him in a rage, and overtake him, if the distance is long, and slay him; though he was not deserving of death, since he did not dislike him in time past. 7Therefore I (Moses) command you, saying, ‘You shall set apart three cities. 8And if the LORD your God enlarges your border, as He has sworn to your fathers, and gives you all the land which He promised to give to your fathers; 9If you keep and obey all these commandments that I command you this day: to love the LORD your God, and walk always in His ways; then you shall add three more cities, beside these three, 10So that innocent blood is not shed in your land that the LORD your God gives you for an inheritance, and so the guilt of bloodshed in not upon you.’

11“But if out of hate, a man lies in wait for his neighbor, assaults and wounds him such that he dies, and then flees to one of these cities: 12Then the elders of his city shall send and fetch him from there, and deliver him to the avenger of blood, that he may die. 13Your eye must not pity him, but you must put away the guilt of innocent blood from Israel, that it may go well with you.

14“You must not move your neighbor's landmark, which your predecessors have set in the inheritance you receive in the land that the LORD your God gives you to possess.

15“One witness is not enough to convict a man for any crime, or offense that he may have committed: but at the mouth of two or three witnesses, shall the matter be established. 16If a malicious witness falsely accuses any man by testifying against him; 17Then both men who have the controversy shall stand before the LORD, before the priests and the judges in office at that time; 18And the judges shall make diligent inquiry; and, if anyone is found to be a false witness, and has testified falsely against his brother; 19Then you shall do to him whatever he had intended to have done to the other. And so you shall purge evil from among you. 20And others shall hear, and fear to commit such evil among you. 21And you shall not pity; but life shall go for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.