2
Speak to the children of Yisra'el, saying, Assign you the cities of refuge, whereof I spoke to you by Moshe,
3
that the manslayer who kills any person unwittingly [and] unawares may flee there: and they shall be to you for a refuge from the avenger of blood.
4
He shall flee to one of those cities, and shall stand at the entrance of the gate of the city, and declare his cause in the ears of the Zakenim of that city; and they shall take him into the city to them, and give him a place, that he may dwell among them.
5
If the avenger of blood pursue after him, then they shall not deliver up the manslayer into his hand; because he struck his neighbor unawares, and didn't hate him before.
6
He shall dwell in that city, until he stand before the congregation for judgment, until the death of the Kohen Gadol that shall be in those days: then shall the manslayer return, and come to his own city, and to his own house, to the city from whence he fled.
7
They set apart Kedesh in the Galil in the hill-country of Naftali, and Shekhem in the hill-country of Efrayim, and Kiryat-Arba (the same is Hevron) in the hill-country of Yehudah.
8
Beyond the Yarden at Yericho eastward, they assigned Betzer in the wilderness in the plain out of the tribe of Re'uven, and Ramot in Gil`ad out of the tribe of Gad, and Galon in Bashan out of the tribe of Menashsheh.
9
These were the appointed cities for all the children of Yisra'el, and for the stranger who sojourns among them, that whoever kills any person unwittingly might flee there, and not die by the hand of the avenger of blood, until he stood before the congregation.