¹Yahweh spoke to Joshua, saying,

²Speak to the children of Israel, saying, Set for yourselves the cities of refuge, which I spoke to you of by the hand of Moses,

³so that the killer who strikes down a being unintentionally, without knowledge, may flee there; and they shall be a refuge for you from the redeemer of the blood.

⁴He shall flee to one of these cities, and stand at the entrance of the gate of the city, and speak his words in the ears of the elders of that city; and they shall gather him into the city to themselves, and give him a place, and he shall dwell with them.

⁵And if the redeemer of the blood pursues him, they shall not deliver up the killer into his hand, for he struck his neighbor without knowledge, and he was not hating him from yesterday or the day before.

⁶He shall dwell in that city until he stands before the face of the congregation for justice, until the death of the great priest who will be in those days. Then the killer shall return and come to his own city and to his own house, to the city from which he fled.

⁷They set apart Kedesh in Galilee in the hill country of Naphtali, and Shechem in the hill country of Ephraim, and Kiriath-arba, which is Hebron, in the hill country of Judah.

⁸And on the far side of the Jordan at Jericho, toward the sunrise, they set Bezer in the wilderness on the plateau, 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 designated cities of for all the children of Israel, and for the sojourner who lives in their midst, so that anyone who strikes down a being unintentionally may flee there and not die by the hand of the redeemer of the blood until he stands before the face of the congregation.