Deuteronomy 19

1When Yahweh your God cuts off the nations whose land Yahweh your God is giving you, and you dispossess them and dwell in their cities and houses,

2You shall set apart three cities for yourself within your land that Yahweh your God is giving you to possess.

3You shall prepare the road for yourself, and you shall divide into three parts the territory of your land that Yahweh your God is giving you as an inheritance, so that every manslayer may flee there.

4This is the provision for the manslayer who may flee there and live: when he strikes his neighbor without intent, and he did not hate him in times past.

5But if a man goes with his neighbor into the forest to cut wood, and his hand swings the axe to cut down the tree, and the iron head slips from the handle and strikes his neighbor so that he dies, he may flee to one of these cities and live.

6otherwise the avenger of blood may pursue the manslayer, because his heart is hot, and overtake him because the way is long, and strike him dead, though he did not deserve the death penalty, since he had not hated him previously.

7Therefore I am commanding you, saying, ‘You shall set apart three cities for yourself.’

8And if Yahweh your God enlarges your territory, as he swore to your fathers, and gives you all the land that he promised to give to your fathers,

9if you keep all this commandment by doing it, which I am commanding you today—to love Yahweh your God and to walk in his ways all your days—then you shall add for yourself three more cities besides these three,

10so that innocent blood may not be shed in the midst of your land that Yahweh your God is giving you as an inheritance, and bloodguilt would be upon you.

11But if there is a man who hates his neighbor, and lies in wait for him, and rises up against him, and strikes him so that he dies, and he flees to one of these cities,

12then the elders of his city shall send and take him from there and hand him over to the avenger of blood, and he shall die.

13Your eye shall not pity him, but you shall purge the innocent blood from Israel, and it shall go well with you.

14You shall not move your neighbor’s boundary marker, which the former generations set, in your inheritance that you will inherit in the land that Yahweh your God is giving you to possess.

15A single witness shall not stand against a man for any iniquity or for any sin, in connection with any sin that he commits; on the testimony of two witnesses or on the testimony of three witnesses a matter shall stand.

16If a malicious witness rises up against a man to testify against him of rebellion,

17then the two men who have the dispute shall stand before Yahweh, before the priests and the judges who are in office in those days.

18And the judges shall investigate thoroughly, and if the witness is a false witness and has testified falsely against his brother,

19Then you shall do to him just as he intended to do to his brother. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.

20And those who remain shall hear and fear, and shall never again do such an evil thing in your midst.

21Your eye shall not pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.