Deuteronomy 19

1When 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,

2you shall set aside three cities in the land that the ETERNAL your God is giving you to possess.

3You 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.—

4Now 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.

5For 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.—

6Otherwise, 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.

7That is why I command you: set aside three cities.

8And when the ETERNAL your God enlarges your territory, as was sworn to your fathers, and gives you all the land that was promised to be given to your fathers—

9if 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.

10Thus blood of the innocent will not be shed, bringing bloodguilt upon you in the land that the ETERNAL your God is allotting to you.

11If, 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,

12the 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;

13you must show him no pity. Thus you will purge Israel of the blood of the innocent, and it will go well with you.

14You 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.

15A 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.

16If someone appears against another party to testify maliciously and gives incriminating yet false testimony,

17the two parties to the dispute shall appear before GOD, before the priests or magistrates in authority at the time,

18and the magistrates shall make a thorough investigation. If the one who testified is a false witness, having testified falsely against a fellow Israelite,

19you shall do to the one as the one schemed to do to the other. Thus you will sweep out evil from your midst;

20others will hear and be afraid, and such evil things will not again be done in your midst.

21Nor must you show pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.