Deuteronomy 19:4-13

19:4 Now this is the law pertaining to one who flees there in order to live,¹ if he has accidentally killed another² without hating him at the time of the accident.³ 19:5 Suppose he goes with someone else⁴ to the forest to cut wood and when he raises the ax⁵ to cut the tree, the ax head flies loose⁶ from the handle and strikes⁷ his fellow worker⁸ so hard that he dies. The person responsible⁹ may then flee to one of these cities to save himself.¹⁰ 19:6 Otherwise the blood avenger will chase after the killer in the heat of his anger, eventually overtake him,¹¹ and kill him,¹² though this is not a capital case¹³ 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 ancestors¹⁴ and gives you all the land he pledged to them,¹⁵ 19:9 and then you are careful to observe all these commandments¹⁶ I am giving¹⁷ you today (namely, to love the Lord your God and to always walk in his ways), then you must add three more cities¹⁸ to these three. 19:10 You must not shed innocent blood¹⁹ in your land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, for that would make you guilty.²⁰ 19:11 However, suppose a person hates someone else²¹ and stalks him, attacks him, kills him,²² 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 avenger²³ to die. 19:13 You must not pity him, but purge out the blood of the innocent²⁴ from Israel, so that it may go well with you.

¹tn Heb “and this is the word pertaining to the one who kills who flees there and lives.”

²tn Heb “who strikes his neighbor without knowledge.”

³tn 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.”

⁴tn Heb “his neighbor” (so NAB, NIV); NASB “his friend.”

⁵tn Heb “and he raises his hand with the iron.”

⁶tn Heb “the iron slips off.”

⁷tn Heb “finds.”

⁸tn Heb “his neighbor.”

⁹tn Heb “he”; the referent (the person responsible for his friend’s death) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

¹⁰tn Heb “and live.”

¹¹tn Heb “and overtake him, for the road is long.”

¹²tn Heb “smite with respect to life,” that is, fatally.

¹³tn Heb “no judgment of death.”

¹⁴tn Heb “fathers.”

¹⁵tn Heb “he said to give to your ancestors.” The pronoun has been used in the translation instead for stylistic reasons.

¹⁶tn 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).

¹⁷tn Heb “commanding”; NAB “which I enjoin on you today.”

¹⁸sn 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.

¹⁹tn 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).

²⁰tn Heb “and blood will be upon you” (cf. KJV, ASV); NRSV “thereby bringing bloodguilt upon you.”

²¹tn Heb “his neighbor.”

²²tn Heb “rises against him and strikes him fatally.”

²³tn 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.

²⁴sn 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).