Joshua, Chapter 20

1. The LORD also spoke to Joshua, saying,    2. Speak to the children of Israel, saying, Select for yourselves cities of refuge, of which I spoke to you by the hand of Moses:    3. That the slayer that kills any person unexpectedly and unknowingly may flee there: and they shall be your refuge from the avenger of blood.    4. And when he that flees to one of those cities shall stand at the entering of the gate of the city, and shall declare his cause in the ears of the elders of that city, they shall take him into the city to them, and give him a place, that he may dwell among them.    5. And if the avenger of blood pursues after him, then they shall not deliver the slayer up into his hand; because he struck his neighbor unknowingly, and did not hate beforehand.    6. And he shall dwell in that city, until he stands before the congregation for judgment, and until the death of the high priest that shall be in those days: then shall the slayer return, and come to his own city, and to his own house, to the city from which he fled.    7. And they appointed Kedesh in Galilee in mount Naphtali, and Shechem in mount Ephraim, and Kirjath-arba, which is Hebron, in the mountain of Judah.    8. And on the other side of the Jordan by Jericho eastward, they assigned Bezer in the wilderness upon 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.    9. These were the cities appointed for all the children of Israel, and for the stranger that sojourns among them, that whoever kills any person unexpectedly might flee there, and not die by the hand of the avenger of blood, until he stood before the congregation.