1When the LORD your God has cut off the nations, whose land the LORD your God gives you, and you succeed them, and dwell in their cities, and in their houses,
2You shall set apart three cities in the midst of your land, which the LORD your God gives you to possess.
3You shall prepare you a way, and divide the borders of your land, which the LORD your God gives you to inherit, into three parts, that every slayer may flee there.
4And this is the case of the slayer, who shall flee there, that he may live: Whoever kills his neighbor unintentionally ignorantly, whom he did not hate in time past;
5As when a man goes into the forest with his neighbor to hew wood, and his hand swings with the axe to cut down the tree, and the head slips from the helve, and strikes his neighbor, that he dies; he shall flee to one of those three cities, and live:
6Lest the avenger of the blood pursue the slayer, while his heart is hot, and overtake him, because the way is long, and slay him; since he was not worthy of death, inasmuch as he did not hate him not in time past.
7Therefore I (Moses) command you, saying, “You shall set apart three cities.
8And if the LORD your God enlarges your border, as He has sworn to your fathers, and gives you all the land which He promised to give to your fathers;
9If you shall keep all these commandments to do them, which I command you this day, to love the LORD your God, and to walk ever in His ways; then shall you add three more cities, beside these three:
10That innocent blood is not shed in your land, which the LORD your God gives you for an inheritance, and so blood be upon you.
11But if any man hates his neighbor, and lies in wait for him, and rises up against him, and mortally wounds him so that he dies, and flees into one of these cities:
12Then the elders of his city shall send and fetch him from there, and deliver him into the hand of the avenger of blood, that he may die.
13Your eye shall not pity him, but you shall put away the guilt of innocent blood from Israel, that it may go well with you.
14You shall not move your neighbor's landmark, which they of old time have set in your inheritance, which you shall inherit in the land that the LORD your God gives you to possess.
15One witness shall not rise against a man for any iniquity, or for any sin that he sins: at the mouth of two or three witnesses, shall the matter be established.
16If a false witness rises up against any man to testify against him that which is wrong;
17Then both men, between whom the controversy is, shall stand before the LORD, before the priests and the judges, who shall be in those days;
18And the judges shall make diligent inquiry; and, behold, if the witness is a false witness, and has testified falsely against his brother;
19Then shall you do to him, as he had thought to have done to his brother. So shall you put the evil away from among you.
20And those who remain shall hear, and fear, and shall thereafter commit no more such evil among you.
21And your eye shall not pity; but life shall go for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.” Easy Reader Bible: Purple Letter Edition © 2023 by Jim Musser. Used by Permission. All rights Reserved. Bible Hub |
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