¹The Lord said to Joshua, ²“Tell the people of Israel, ‘Now choose for yourselves the cities of refuge about which I spoke to you through Moses. ³Choose them so that anyone who unintentionally kills someone may run to them. They will be a place of refuge from any relative who can avenge the death.

⁴“ ‘A person who kills someone accidentally can run to one of these cities. There he will stand at the entrance to the city, where court is held, and present his case to the leaders of that city. Then they will take him into their city and give him a place to live with them.

⁵“ ‘If the relative who can avenge the death pursues him, the leaders must not hand him over to the relative because he didn’t intend to kill the other person. He didn’t even hate the person he killed. ⁶The accused person may remain in that city until he can stand trial in front of the congregation or until whoever is chief priest at that time dies. Then he may go back to his home in the city from which he ran away.’ ”

⁷Kedesh in Galilee in the mountains of Naphtali, Shechem in the mountains of Ephraim, and Kiriath Arba (now called Hebron) in the mountains of Judah were chosen as cities of refuge.

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