Deuteronomy 19:3-21

19:3 You shall build a roadway and divide into thirds the whole extent¹ of your land that the Lord your God is providing as your inheritance; anyone who kills another person should flee to the closest of these cities. 19:4 Now this is the law pertaining to one who flees there in order to live,² if he has accidentally killed another³ without hating him at the time of the accident.⁴ 19:5 Suppose he goes with someone else⁵ to the forest to cut wood and when he raises the ax⁶ to cut the tree, the ax head flies loose⁷ from the handle and strikes⁸ his fellow worker⁹ so hard that he dies. The person responsible¹⁰ may then flee to one of these cities to save himself.¹¹ 19:6 Otherwise the blood avenger will chase after the killer in the heat of his anger, eventually overtake him,¹² and kill him,¹³ though this is not a capital case¹⁴ since he did not hate him at the time of the accident. 19:7 Therefore, I am commanding you to set apart for yourselves three cities. 19:8 If the Lord your God enlarges your borders as he promised your ancestors¹⁵ and gives you all the land he pledged to them,¹⁶ 19:9 and then you are careful to observe all these commandments¹⁷ I am giving¹⁸ you today (namely, to love the Lord your God and to always walk in his ways), then you must add three more cities¹⁹ to these three. 19:10 You must not shed innocent blood²⁰ in your land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, for that would make you guilty.²¹ 19:11 However, suppose a person hates someone else²² and stalks him, attacks him, kills him,²³ and then flees to one of these cities. 19:12 The elders of his own city must send for him and remove him from there to deliver him over to the blood avenger²⁴ to die. 19:13 You must not pity him, but purge out the blood of the innocent²⁵ from Israel, so that it may go well with you.

Laws Concerning Witnesses

19:14 You must not encroach on your neighbor’s property,²⁶ which will have been defined²⁷ in the inheritance you will obtain in the land the Lord your God is giving you.²⁸

19:15 A single witness may not testify²⁹ against another person for any trespass or sin that he commits. A matter may be legally established³⁰ only on the testimony of two or three witnesses. 19:16 If a false³¹ witness testifies against another person and accuses him of a crime,³² 19:17 then both parties to the controversy must stand before the Lord, that is, before the priests and judges³³ who will be in office in those days. 19:18 The judges will thoroughly investigate the matter, and if the witness should prove to be false and to have given false testimony against the accused,³⁴ 19:19 you must do to him what he had intended to do to the accused. In this way you will purge³⁵ evil from among you. 19:20 The rest of the people will hear and become afraid to keep doing such evil among you. 19:21 You must not show pity; the principle will be a life for a life, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, and a foot for a foot.³⁶

¹tn Heb “border.”

²tn Heb “and this is the word pertaining to the one who kills who flees there and lives.”

³tn Heb “who strikes his neighbor without knowledge.”

⁴tn Heb “yesterday and a third (day)” (likewise in v. 6). The point is that there was no animosity between the two parties at the time of the accident and therefore no motive for the killing. Cf. NAB “had previously borne no malice”; NRSV “had not been at enmity before.”

⁵tn Heb “his neighbor” (so NAB, NIV); NASB “his friend.”

⁶tn Heb “and he raises his hand with the iron.”

⁷tn Heb “the iron slips off.”

⁸tn Heb “finds.”

⁹tn Heb “his neighbor.”

¹⁰tn Heb “he”; the referent (the person responsible for his friend’s death) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

¹¹tn Heb “and live.”

¹²tn Heb “and overtake him, for the road is long.”

¹³tn Heb “smite with respect to life,” that is, fatally.

¹⁴tn Heb “no judgment of death.”

¹⁵tn Heb “fathers.”

¹⁶tn Heb “he said to give to your ancestors.” The pronoun has been used in the translation instead for stylistic reasons.

¹⁷tn Heb “all this commandment.” This refers here to the entire covenant agreement of the Book of Deuteronomy as encapsulated in the Shema (Deut 6:4-5).

¹⁸tn Heb “commanding”; NAB “which I enjoin on you today.”

¹⁹sn You will add three more cities. Since these are alluded to nowhere else and thus were probably never added, this must be a provision for other cities of refuge should they be needed (cf. v. 8). See P. C. Craigie, Deuteronomy (NICOT), 267.

²⁰tn Heb “innocent blood must not be shed.” The Hebrew phrase דָּם נָקִי (dam naqiy) means the blood of a person to whom no culpability or responsibility adheres because what he did was without malice aforethought (HALOT 224 s.v דָּם 4.b).

²¹tn Heb “and blood will be upon you” (cf. KJV, ASV); NRSV “thereby bringing bloodguilt upon you.”

²²tn Heb “his neighbor.”

²³tn Heb “rises against him and strikes him fatally.”

²⁴tn The גֹאֵל הַדָּם (go’el haddam, “avenger of blood”) would ordinarily be a member of the victim’s family who, after due process of law, was invited to initiate the process of execution (cf. Num 35:16-28). See R. Hubbard, NIDOTTE 1:789-94.

²⁵sn Purge out the blood of the innocent. Because of the corporate nature of Israel’s community life, the whole community shared in the guilt of unavenged murder unless and until vengeance occurred. Only this would restore spiritual and moral equilibrium (Num 35:33).

²⁶tn Heb “border.” Cf. NRSV “You must not move your neighbor’s boundary marker.”

²⁷tn Heb “which they set off from the beginning.”

²⁸tn The Hebrew text includes “to possess it.” This phrase has been left untranslated to avoid redundancy.

²⁹tn Heb “rise up” (likewise in v. 16).

³⁰tn Heb “may stand.”

³¹tn Heb “violent” (חָמָס, khamas). This is a witness whose motivation from the beginning is to do harm to the accused and who, therefore, resorts to calumny and deceit. See I. Swart and C. VanDam, NIDOTTE 2:177-80.

³²tn Or “rebellion.” Rebellion against God’s law is in view (cf. NAB “of a defection from the law”).

³³tn The appositional construction (“before the Lord, that is, before the priests and judges”) indicates that these human agents represented the Lord himself, that is, they stood in his place (cf. Deut 16:18-20; 17:8-9).

³⁴tn Heb “his brother” (also in the following verse).

³⁵tn Heb “you will burn out” (בִּעַרְתָּ, bi’arta). Like a cancer, unavenged sin would infect the whole community. It must, therefore, be excised by the purging out of its perpetrators who, presumably, remained unrepentant (cf. Deut 13:6; 17:7, 12; 21:21; 22:21-22, 24; 24:7).

³⁶sn This kind of justice is commonly called lex talionis or “measure for measure” (cf. Exod 21:23-25; Lev 24:19-20). It is likely that it is the principle that is important and not always a strict application. That is, the punishment should fit the crime and it may do so by the payment of fines or other suitable and equitable compensation (cf. Exod 22:21; Num 35:31). See T. S. Frymer-Kensky, “Tit for Tat: The Principle of Equal Retribution in Near Eastern and Biblical Law,” BA 43 (1980): 230-34.