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

²Three cities you will set apart for yourself in the middle of your land, which Yahweh your God is giving you to take possession of.

³You will prepare the way for yourself, and divide the border of your land, which Yahweh your God gives you as an inheritance, into three parts, so that every killer may flee there.

⁴And this is the word concerning the killer who flees there and lives: whoever strikes his neighbor without knowledge, and he was not hating him since yesterday and the day before.

⁵And whoever goes with his neighbor into the forest to cut wood, and his hand swings with the axe to cut down the tree, and the iron slips off from the tree, and finds his neighbor, and he dies, he will flee to one of these cities and live.

⁶lest the one who redeems the blood pursue after the killer while his heart is hot, and overtake him, for the way has grown great, and strike him down in his being, though there is no sentence of death for him, for he was not hating him since yesterday and the day before.

⁷Therefore I am commanding you, saying, 'Three cities you will set apart for yourself.'

⁸And if Yahweh your God enlarges your border, as he swore to your fathers, and gives you all the land that he spoke of giving to your fathers,

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

¹⁰Innocent blood must not be shed in the midst of your land, which Yahweh your God is giving you as an inheritance, or bloodshed will be on you.

¹¹But if anyone is hating his neighbor, lies in wait for him, rises up against him, strikes him down in his being, so that he dies, and flees to one of these cities,

¹²then the elders of his city will send and take him from there, and give him into the hand of the one who redeems the blood, and he will die.

¹³Your eye will not look with pity on him; you will burn out the blood of the innocent from Israel, and it will go well for you.

¹⁴You will not move back the border of your neighbor, which the former ones bounded, in your inheritance, which you will inherit in the land that Yahweh your God is giving you to take possession of.

¹⁵One witness will not stand against a man for any guilt or any sin, in any sin that he sins; on the mouth of two witnesses or on the mouth of three witnesses, a word will stand.

¹⁶When a witness of violence stands up against a man, to testify against him of rebellion,

¹⁷then the two men who have the dispute will stand before the face of Yahweh, before the face of the priests and the judges who will be in those days.

¹⁸And the judges will inquire thoroughly, and behold, the witness is a witness of falsehood; he has testified falsehood against his brother,

¹⁹Then you will do to him just as he schemed to do to his brother; so you will burn out the evil from your midst.

²⁰And those who are left will hear and be afraid, and they will never again do anything like this evil word in your midst.

²¹And your eye will not pity: being for being, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.