Deuteronomy 19

1 “And when the Lord your God has destroyed the nations whose land your God is giving you, and you have taken it over and are living in their cities and in their houses, 2 you are to set apart three cities for yourself in the middle of your land, which the Lord your God is giving you. 3 Measure out your roads, and divide the territory of your land, which the Lord your God is allotting to you, into three parts; and there is to be a refuge there for every killer. [a] 4 And this is the rule for the killer who flees there and lives: whoever strikes down his neighbor without knowing it, and did not hate him before — 5 as when a man goes into the woods with his neighbor to gather wood, and the hand of the one cutting with the axe swings hard, and the head flies off the handle and hits his neighbor and he dies — that man is to flee to one of these cities and live. 6 Otherwise the one who avenges the blood may chase after the killer while his heart is hot, and catch up with him if the road is too long, and kill him — though there is no sentence of death on this man, because he did not hate him before. [b] 7 That is why I am charging you and saying: You are to set apart three cities for yourself. 8 And if the Lord your God enlarges your borders, as he swore to your fathers, and the Lord gives you all the land he said he would give to your fathers — 9 if you listen and do all these commands I am charging you with today, to love the Lord your God and to walk in all his ways always — then you are to add three more cities for yourself to these three, 10 so that innocent blood may not be spilled in the land the Lord your God is giving you to hold, and there may be no one guilty of blood among you.

11 But if there is a man among you who hates his neighbor and lies in wait for him and rises up against him and strikes him down and he dies, and he flees to one of these cities, 12 then the elders of his city are to send and take him from there and hand him over into the hands of the one who avenges the blood, and he is to die. 13 Your eye is not to spare him. So you are to clear innocent blood out of Israel, and it will go well with you.

14 You are not to move your neighbor's boundary stones, which your fathers set in the inheritance you were given a share of, in the land the Lord your God is giving you to hold.

15 One witness is not to stand up to testify against a man for any wrongdoing, or for any fault, or for any sin he may commit; every matter is to be settled on the word of two witnesses, or on the word of three witnesses. 16 And if a dishonest witness stands up against a man, accusing him of wrongdoing, 17 then the two men between whom the dispute stands are to stand before the Lord, and before the priests, and before the judges who are in office in those days. 18 And the judges are to look into it carefully. And if the witness turns out to be a dishonest witness who has given dishonest testimony and stood up against his brother, 19 then you are to do to him what he wickedly planned to do to his brother; so you are to burn the evil out from among you. 20 And the rest will hear and be afraid, and will not do such an evil thing among you again. 21 Your eye is not to spare him: you are to require life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.” [c]