Joshua 20

₁The Lord said to Joshua: ₂‘You must tell the Israelites to choose which of the towns must be towns_of_safety. I have told Moses to tell you about it. ₃When someone has killed a person, but it was an accident and he did not want to kill that person, then he may run away to a town_of_safety. The brother or cousin of the dead person may not go into the town_of_safety and kill the man who ran away. ₄The man who killed the person must go to the town_of_safety and when he gets there he must go to the gate of the town_of_safety and he must tell the leaders of that town what happened. They must let him come into the town and they must give him a place to stay. ₅If the brothers or cousins of the person who died follow_and_chase the man who killed the person, then the leaders of the town may not give the man to them, because he did not want to kill the person, he was not angry and they were not enemies. ₆The judges of the town_of_safety must decide if he is guilty or not and if he may stay there. He must stay there until the congregation can decide if he is guilty or not, and if he is not guilty, he must stay there until the high-priest of that time dies. Then he may go back to his own town, to his house where he lived before he ran away.’

₇The people then chose these towns: Kedesh in Galilee in the mountains of Naphtali, Shechem in the mountains of Ephraim and Kiriath-Arba in the mountains of Judah, which is Hebron. ₈They also chose 3 other towns on the other side of the Jordan River, east of Jericho in the desert: Bezer on the Highveld in the land of the Reuben tribe, Ramoth in Gilead in the land of the Gad tribe and Golan in Bashan in the land of the Manasseh tribe. ₉These were the towns that they chose. An Israelite or a stranger who lived with the Israelites could run away to one of these towns_of_safety if he had killed a person, but he had not wanted to kill him, and it had been an accident. Then the brother or cousin of the person who had died could not come and kill the man before the congregation had decided if he was guilty or not.