Deuteronomy 19:8-21 ▼

8 “Now if Yahweh your God enlarges your territory, just as He has sworn to your fathers, and gives you all the land which He promised to give to your fathers—

9 if you be careful to do all this commandment which I am commanding you today, to love Yahweh your God and to walk in His ways all your days—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 Yahweh 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 down his life 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 give him over 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 Yahweh 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; at the mouth of two or three witnesses a matter shall be established.

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 Yahweh, before the priests and the judges who will be in office in those days.

18 And the judges shall inquire thoroughly, and behold, if the witness is a false witness and he has accused his brother falsely,

19 then you shall do to him just as he had intended to do to his brother. Thus you shall purge the evil from among you.

20 And the rest will hear and be afraid and will never again do such an evil thing among you.

21 Thus your eye shall not show pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.