1And YHWH spoke to Joshua, saying:
2Speak to the children of Israel, saying: Give for yourselves the cities of refuge, of which I spoke to you by the hand of Moses,
3for the manslayer who strikes a soul (nephesh) by error, without knowledge, to flee there; and they shall be for you for a refuge from the redeemer of blood.
4And he shall flee to one of these cities, and stand at the entrance of the gate of the city, and speak in the ears of the elders of that city his words; and they shall gather him into the city to them, and give him a place, and he shall dwell with them.
5And if the redeemer of blood pursues after him, then they shall not deliver the manslayer into his hand; because without knowledge he struck his neighbor, and he had not hated him from yesterday and the day before.
6And he shall dwell in that city until he stands before the congregation for judgment (mishpat), until the death of the great priest who shall be in those days; then the manslayer shall return, and come to his city and to his house, to the city from which he fled.
7And they set apart Kedesh in Galilee in the hill-country of Naphtali, and Shechem in the hill-country of Ephraim, and Kiriath-arba (it is Hebron) in the hill-country of Judah.
8And beyond the Jordan of Jericho eastward they gave Bezer in the wilderness in the plain out of the tribe of Reuben, and Ramoth in Gilead out of the tribe of Gad, and Golan in Bashan out of the tribe of Manasseh.
9These were the appointed cities for all the children of Israel, and for the sojourner who sojourns among them, that whoever strikes a soul (nephesh) by error might flee there, and not die by the hand of the redeemer of blood, until he stands before the congregation.