Joshua 20

¹Then the Lord said to Joshua ,

²Say to the people of Israel , Appoint the cities of refuge , of which I spoke to you through Moses ,

³that the manslayer who strikes any person without intent or unknowingly may flee there . They shall be for you a refuge from the avenger of blood .

⁴He shall flee to one of these cities and shall stand at the entrance of the gate of the city and explain his case to the elders of that city . Then they shall take him into the city and give him a place , and he shall remain with them.

⁵And if the avenger of blood pursues him, they shall not give up the manslayer into his hand , because he struck his neighbor unknowingly , and did not hate him in the past .

⁶And he shall remain in that city until he has stood before the congregation for judgment , until the death of him who is high priest at the time . Then the manslayer may return to his own town and his own home , to the town from which he fled .

⁷So they set apart Kedesh in Galilee in the hill country of Naphtali , and Shechem in the hill country of Ephraim , and Kiriath-arba (that is, Hebron ) in the hill country of Judah .

⁸And beyond the Jordan east of Jericho , they appointed Bezer in the wilderness on the tableland , 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 designated for all the people of Israel and for the stranger sojourning among them, that anyone who killed a person without intent could flee there, so that he might not die by the hand of the avenger of blood , till he stood before the congregation .