Joshua

The Cities of Refuge

The Lord said to Joshua:

“Speak to the Israelites and tell them to choose the cities of refuge I commanded through Moses,

places where a person who kills someone accidentally can find safety; they are to be your refuge from the avenger of blood.

The man who has killed can run to one of these cities; he must go to the entrance and explain his case to the elders of that town. They will welcome him and assign a place for him to stay.

If the person seeking revenge follows him there, they must not hand him over, since he killed his neighbor accidentally and not out of hatred.

The man who killed must stay in that city until he has been given a fair trial and until the high priest who is in office dies. Only then can he return to his own town and house, the town he fled from.

For this purpose, they set aside Kedesh in Galilee, in the hill country of Naphtali, Shechem in the highlands of Ephraim, and Kiriath-Arba, now Hebron, in the hill country of Judah.

East of the Jordan, in the desert east of Jericho, they chose Bezer in the territory of Reuben, Ramoth-Gilead in the territory of Gad, and Golan in Bashan in the territory of Manasseh.

These were the towns set aside for all the Israelites and for any foreigner living among them, where anyone who had killed a person accidentally could find safety from the dead person’s relative looking for revenge until he had been given a public trial.