New American Standard Bible

Deuteronomy 19:6-17 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

6. otherwise the avenger of blood might pursue the manslayer in the heat of his anger, and overtake him, because the way is long, and take his life, though he was not deserving of death, since he had not hated him previously.

7. Therefore, I command you, saying, 'You shall set aside three cities for yourself.'

8. "If the Lord your God enlarges your territory, just as He has sworn to your fathers, and gives you all the land which He promised to give your fathers-

9. if you carefully observe all this commandment which I command you today, to love the Lord your God, and to walk in His ways always-then you shall add three more cities for yourself, besides these three.

10. So innocent blood will not be shed in the midst of your land which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance, and bloodguiltiness be on you.

11. "But 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,

12. then the elders of his city shall send and take him from there and deliver him into the hand of the avenger of blood, that he may die.

13. You shall not pity him, but you shall purge the blood of the innocent from Israel, that it may go well with you.

14. "You shall not move your neighbor's boundary mark, which the ancestors have set, in your inheritance which you will inherit in the land that the Lord your God gives you to possess.

15. "A single witness shall not rise up against a man on account of any iniquity or any sin which he has committed; on the evidence of two or three witnesses a matter shall be confirmed.

16. If a malicious witness rises up against a man to accuse him of wrongdoing,

17. then both the men who have the dispute shall stand before the Lord, before the priests and the judges who will be in office in those days.