Yahweh spoke to Joshua, saying,

Speak to the children of Israel, saying, Assign you the cities of refuge, of which I spoke to you by Moses,

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.

She shall flee to one of those cities, and shall stand at the entrance of the gate of the city, and declare her cause in the ears of the elders of that city; and they shall take her into the city to them, and give her a place, that she may dwell among them.

If the avenger of blood pursue after her, then they shall not deliver up the manslayer into her hand; because she struck her neighbor unawares, and didn't hate her before.

She shall dwell in that city, until she stand before the congregation for judgment, until the death of the high priestess that shall be in those days: then shall the manslayer return, and come to her own city, and to her own house, to the city from whence she fled.

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.

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.

These were the appointed cities for all the children of Israel, 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 she stood before the congregation.