Deuteronomy — Chapter 19

When the ETERNAL your God has cut down the nations whose land the ETERNAL your God is assigning to you, and you have dispossessed them and settled in their towns and homes,

you shall set aside three cities in the land that the ETERNAL your God is giving you to possess.

You shall survey the distances, and divide into three parts the territory of the country that the ETERNAL your God has allotted to you, so that any manslayer may have a place to flee to.aany manslayer … place to flee to I.e., regardless of the victim’s gender. As for a female culprit, the case may have been more complex.—

Now this is the case of the manslayer who may flee there and live: one who has slain another unwittingly, without having been an enemy in the past.

For instance, a man goes with another fellow into a grove to cut wood; as his hand swings the ax to cut down a tree, the ax-head flies off the handle and strikes the other so that he dies. That man shall flee to one of these cities and live.—

Otherwise, when the distance is great, the blood-avenger, pursuing the manslayer in hot anger, may overtake him and strike him down; yet he did not incur the death penalty, since he had never been the other’s enemy.

That is why I command you: set aside three cities.

And when the ETERNAL your God enlarges your territory, as was sworn to your fathers,bfathers See note at 1.35. and gives you all the land that was promised to be given to your fathers—

if you faithfully observe all this Instruction that I enjoin upon you this day, to love the ETERNAL your God and to walk in God’s ways at all times—then you shall add three more towns to those three.

Thus blood of the innocent will not be shed, bringing bloodguilt upon you in the land that the ETERNAL your God is allotting to you.

If, however, [for instance,] a man who is the enemy of another lies in wait for him and sets upon him and strikes a fatal blow and then flees to one of these towns,

the elders of his town shall have him brought back from there and shall hand him over to the blood-avenger to be put to death;

you must show him no pity. Thus you will purge Israel of the blood of the innocent,cpurge Israel of the blood of the innocent Cf. Num. 35.33–34. and it will go well with you.

You shall not move your neighbor’s landmarks, set up by previous generations, in the property that will be allotted to you in the land that the ETERNAL your God is giving you to possess.

A single witness may not validate against another party any guilt or blame for any offense that may be committed; a case can be valid only on the testimony of two witnesses or more.dmore See note at 17.6.

If someone appears against another party to testify maliciously and gives incriminating yet false testimony,

the two parties to the dispute shall appear before GOD, before the priests or magistrates in authority at the time,

and the magistrates shall make a thorough investigation. If the one who testified is a false witness, having testified falsely against a fellow Israelite,

you shall do to the one as the one schemed to do to the other. Thus you will sweep out evil from your midst;

others will hear and be afraid, and such evil things will not again be done in your midst.

Nor must you show pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.