1And Yahweh spoke to Joshua, saying, 2Speak to the sons of Israel, saying, Assign for yourselves the cities of refuge, of which I spoke to you{+} by Moses, 3that the manslayer that kills any person unintentionally [and] unawares may flee there: and they will be to you{+} for a refuge from the avenger of blood. 4And he will flee to one of those cities, and will stand at the entrance of the gate of the city, and declare his cause in the ears of the elders of that city; and they will take him into the city to them, and give him a place, that he may dwell among them. 5And if the avenger of blood pursues after him, then they will not deliver up the manslayer into his hand; because he struck his fellow man unawares, and did not hate him formerly. 6And he will dwell in that city, until he stands before the congregation for judgment, until the death of the high priest who will be in those days: then the manslayer will return, and come to his own city, and to his own house, to the city from where he fled. 7And they set apart Kedesh in Galilee in the hill-country of Naphtali, and Shechem in the hill-country of Ephraim, and Kiriath-arba (the same is Hebron) in the hill-country of Judah. 8And beyond the Jordan at Jericho eastward, they assigned Bezer in the wilderness in the plain out of the tribe of Reuben, and Ramoth in Gilead out of the tribe of Gad, and Golan in Bashan out of the tribe of Manasseh. 9These were the appointed cities for all the sons of Israel, and for the stranger who sojourns among them, that whoever kills any person unintentionally might flee there, and not die by the hand of the avenger of blood, until he stands before the congregation.