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1 When YHWH your God has cut off the nations whose land YHWH your God is giving you, and you dispossess them and dwell in their cities and in their houses, 2 you shall separate for yourself three cities in the midst of your land that YHWH your God is giving you to possess. 3 You shall prepare for yourself the way and divide into three parts the territory of your land that YHWH your God is giving you to inherit, and it will be that any manslayer may flee there. 4 And this is the matter of the manslayer who flees there that he may live: Whoever strikes his neighbor without knowing, and he without having hated him from yesterday and the day before yesterday, 5 and he who goes with his neighbor into the forest to cut timber, and his hand swings with the ax to cut down the tree, and the head slips from the handle and strikes his neighbor so that he dies, he shall flee to one of these cities and live, 6 lest the avenger of blood pursue after the manslayer while his anger is hot, and overtake him because the way is long, and kill him, and he did not have a sentence of death, since he had not hated him from yesterday and the day before yesterday. 7 Upon thus I command you, in saying, three cities you shall separate for yourself. 8 And if YHWH your God enlarges your territory, as He swore to your fathers, and He gives you all the land that He promised to give to your fathers, 9 and if you keep all this commandment and do it, that which I command you today, to love YHWH your God, and to walk in His ways all the days, then you shall add to yourself three more cities besides these three. 10 And innocent blood will not be shed in the midst of your land, which YHWH your God is giving you as an inheritance, and blood be upon you. 11 But if anyone comes to hate his neighbor, and he lies in wait for him and rises against him and strikes him mortally so that he dies, and he flees to one of these cities, 12 the elders of his city shall send and bring him from there, and deliver him to the hand of the avenger of blood, that he may die. 13 Your eye shall not pity him, and you shall put away the innocent blood from Israel, that it may go well with you. Deuteronomy 19:1-13, Berean Literal Bible. Public domain.
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