1 “When your God YHWH has cut off the nations whose land your God YHWH has given to you, and you have dispossessed them, and stayed in their cities and in their houses, 2 you will separate three cities for yourself in the middle of your land which your God YHWH has given to you to possess it. 3 You will prepare the way for yourself, and divide into three parts the border of your land which your God YHWH causes you to inherit, and it will be for the fleeing there of every manslayer. 4 And this will be the matter of the manslayer who flees there, and lived: he who strikes his neighbor unknowingly, and is not hating him before— 5 even he who came into a forest with his neighbor to hew wood, and his hand had driven with an axe to cut the tree, and the iron had slipped from the wood, and had met his neighbor, and he had died—he will flee to one of these cities, and live, 6 lest the redeemer of blood pursue after the manslayer when his heart is hot and overtake him, because the way is great, and has struck his life, and he had no sentence of death, for he was not hating him before. 7 Therefore I am commanding you, saying, You will separate three cities for yourself. 8 And if your God YHWH enlarges your border, as He has sworn to your fathers, and has given to you all the land which He has spoken to give to your fathers— 9 when you keep all this commands to do it, which I am commanding you today, to love your God YHWH and to walk in His ways for all the days—then you will add three more cities for yourself to these three. 10 And do this lest innocent blood is spilled in the middle of your land which your God YHWH has given to you for an inheritance, and there will be blood on you. 11 And when a man hates his neighbor, and lays in wait for him, and rises against him, and struck his life, and he has died, then he will flee to one of these cities, 12 and the elderly of his city will send and taken him from there, and give him into the hand of the redeemer of blood, and he will die. 13 Your eye will have no pity on him, and you will put away the innocent blood from Israel, and it will be well with you. 14 You will not remove a border of your neighbor, which they of former times had made, in your inheritance, which you inherit in the land which your God YHWH has given to you to possess it. 15 One witness will not rise against a man for any iniquity and for any sin, in any sin which he sinned. By the mouth of two witnesses or by the mouth of three witnesses will a thing be established. 16 When a violent witness rises against a man to testify against him apostasy, 17 then both of the men who have the strife will stand before YHWH, before the priests and the judges who will be in those days, 18 and the judges will search diligently, and look, the witness will be a false witness who has testified a falsehood against his brother, 19 then you will do to him as he devised to do to his brother, and you will put away evil out of your middle, 20 and those who are left will hear and fear, and will not continue to do according to this evil thing in your middle anymore. 21 And your eye will not pity—life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.”