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And Yahuah spoke to Yehoshua, saying,
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“Speak to the sons of Yisra’el, saying, ‘Give for yourselves the cities of refuge of which I spoke to you by the hand of Mosheh,
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so that the manslayer who strikes a being unintentionally, without knowledge, may flee there. And they shall be for you as a refuge from the avenger of blood.
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And he shall flee to one of these cities and stand at the entrance of the gate of the city, and speak his words in the ears of the elders of that city. And they shall gather him into the city to themselves and give him a place, and he shall dwell with them.
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And if the avenger of blood pursues after him, they shall not give the manslayer into his hand, because he struck his neighbor without knowledge and did not hate him formerly.
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And he shall dwell in that city until he stands before the congregation for judgment, until the death of the high kohen who shall be in those days. Then the manslayer shall return and come to his city and to his house, to the city from which he fled.’”
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And they set apart Qedesh in Galil, in the hill country of Naftali, and Shekhem in the hill country of Efrayim, and Qiryat-Arba, which is Chevron, in the hill country of Yehudah.
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And beyond the Yarden, east of Yericho, they gave Betzer in the wilderness, on the plain, from the tribe of Reuven; and Ramot in Gilad from the tribe of Gad; and Golan in Bashan from the tribe of Menasheh.
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These were the appointed cities for all the sons of Yisra’el and for the sojourner who sojourned in their midst, so that anyone who struck a being unintentionally might flee there and not die by the hand of the avenger of blood until he stood before the congregation.