Numbers 35:22-34 ▼

22 “ But if anyone suddenly pushes a person without hostility or throws any object at him without malicious intent

23 or without looking drops a stone that could kill a person and he dies, but he was not his enemy and wasn’t trying to harm him,

24 the assembly is to judge between the slayer and the avenger of blood according to these ordinances.

25 The assembly is to protect the one who kills someone from the hand of the avenger of blood. Then the assembly will return him to the city of refuge he fled to, and he must live there until the death of the high priest who was anointed with the holy oil.

26 “ If the one who kills someone ever goes outside the border of the city of refuge he fled to,

27 and the avenger of blood finds him outside the border of his city of refuge and kills him, the avenger will not be guilty of bloodshed,

28 for the one who killed a person was supposed to live in his city of refuge until the death of the high priest. Only after the death of the high priest may the one who has killed a person return to the land he possesses.

29 These instructions will be a statutory ordinance for you throughout your generations wherever you live.

30 “ If anyone kills a person, the murderer is to be put to death based on the word of witnesses. But no one is to be put to death based on the testimony of one witness.

31 You are not to accept a ransom for the life of a murderer who is guilty of killing someone; he must be put to death .

32 Neither should you accept a ransom for the person who flees to his city of refuge, allowing him to return and live in the land before the death of the high priest.

33 “ Do not defile the land where you are, for bloodshed defiles the land, and there can be no atonement for the land because of the blood that is shed on it, except by the blood of the person who shed it.

34 Do not make the land unclean where you live and where I reside; for I, Yahweh, reside among the Israelites .”