¹When the Lord your God cuts off the nations whose land the Lord your God is giving you, so that you dispossess them and dwell in their cities and in their houses, ²you will separate out three cities for yourself inside your land which the Lord your God is giving you to take possession of. ³You will prepare the way for yourself, and you will divide in three parts the territory of your land which the Lord your God will give you as an inheritance, and it will be for any manslayer to flee to. ⁴And these are the circumstances when the manslayer may flee there and live: when he strikes his neighbour unintentionally, and he did not hate him in the past, ⁵or when he goes into a forest with his neighbour to cut wood, and his hand drives the axe to cut the wood and the iron head comes off the handle and hits his neighbour, and he dies, then he will flee to one of these cities and may live, ⁶lest the avenger of blood pursues the manslayer, because his heart has flared up, and he catches up with him, because the way is long, and he strikes him dead, whereas he deserved no sentence of death, because he had not hated him in the past. ⁷That is why I am commanding you, saying, ‘You shall separate out three cities for yourself.’ ⁸And when the Lord your God broadens your territory as he swore to your fathers, and he gives you all the land which he said he would give to your fathers, ⁹if you keep this whole body of commandments, by carrying it out – what I am commanding you today – to love the Lord your God and to walk in his ways day after day, then you will add three more cities to these three. ¹⁰And no innocent blood shall be shed in the midst of your land which the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, so that blood guilt would be on you. ¹¹But if there is a man who hates his neighbour, and he ambushes him and rises up against him, and he strikes him lethally, and he dies, and the man flees to one of these cities, ¹²then the elders of his city will send for him, and they will take him from there and deliver him into the hands of the avenger of blood, and he will die. ¹³Your eye will not show pity on him, and you will eradicate the guilt of innocent blood from Israel, so that things go well for you. ¹⁴You shall not move the boundary with your neighbour, which will be marked out initially in your inheritance which you will inherit in the land which the Lord your God is giving you to take possession of. ¹⁵One witness against a man shall not stand for any iniquity or any sin – for any sinfulness by which he sins. A case will stand at the attestation of two witnesses or at the attestation of three witnesses. ¹⁶If a false witness against a man rises up, to testify against him deviously, ¹⁷then the two men who have a quarrel will stand before the Lord, before the priests and the judges who are in office in those days, ¹⁸and the judges will investigate thoroughly, and if the witness is a false witness – he has testified falsely against his brother – ¹⁹then you will deal with him as he planned to deal with his brother, and so you will eradicate the evil from your midst. ²⁰And those who remain will hear and fear, and they will not do such an evil thing as this again in your midst. ²¹And your eye will show no pity. A life for a life, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, a foot for a foot.

Reference(s) in Chapter 19: v.15 ↔ Matthew 18:16, John 8:17, 2 Corinthians 13:1.