1. When the LORD your God has cut off the nations, whose land the LORD your God gives you, and you dispossess them, and dwell in their cities, and in their houses;
2. You shall set apart three cities for you in the midst of your land, which the LORD your God gives you to possess it.
3. You shall prepare you a way, and divide the territory of your land, which the LORD your God gives you to inherit, into three parts, that every manslayer may flee there.
4. And this is the case of the manslayer, who shall flee there, that he may live: Whoever kills his neighbor unintentionally, whom he hated not in time past;
5. As when a man goes into the wood with his neighbor to hew wood, and his hand swings a stroke with the ax to cut down the tree, and the head slips from the handle, and strikes his neighbor, that he dies; he shall flee unto one of those cities, and live:
6. Lest the avenger of blood pursue the manslayer, while his anger is hot, and overtake him, because the way is long, and slay him; whereas he was not worthy of death, inasmuch as he hated the victim not in time past.
7. Therefore I command you, saying, you shall set apart three cities for you.
8. And if the LORD your God enlarges your border, as he has sworn unto your fathers, and gives you all the land which he promised to give unto your fathers;