Joshua 20
Safe cities
1Then the LORD spoke to Joshua. 2He said, ‘Tell the people of Israel to choose special cities. I told you this through Moses. 3Anyone can be safe in these cities if he has killed someone. But he will only be safe if he had not meant to kill that person. The person who killed a man or woman can run to that city. The person will be safe. They will not let the brother of the dead person kill him there (Numbers 35:6-34). ▼▼20:3 The law of Moses said that any man who killed a person must die. The brother or cousin of the dead person had to kill him (Leviticus 24:17-18).
4The man who killed someone must go to the city. When he arrives, he must stand in the gate of the city. There he must tell the leaders what he has done. Then they must let him go in. And they must give him a place to live and stay there. 5The brother of the dead person may follow the man who killed his brother or sister. The leaders must not let the brother hurt that man. This is because he did not mean to kill the dead man. He did not want to hurt him. 6The man who killed must stay in that city. He may have told them what is true. The judges there will decide. Then he must wait until the High Priest of that time dies. After that, he is free to return to the town that he came from.’ 7So they chose these towns: Kedesh in Galilee, in the hills of Naphtali, Shechem in the hills of Ephraim, Kiriath Arba (that is, Hebron) in the hills of Judah. 8They chose other cities east of the river Jordan and to the east of the flat land near Jericho: Bezer in the flat desert land of Reuben, Ramoth in Gilead in the tribe of Gad, Golan in Bashan in the tribe of Manasseh. 9Any Israelite or foreign person living in Israel could run to these cities. They may have killed someone, but had not meant to kill them. They could run to these cities. Then the brother of the dead person could not kill them. The judges had to decide whether they had meant to kill or not. Nobody could kill them before this.
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