Joshua 20:1 – 21:7

20:1 Then Jehovah spoke to Joshua, saying,
20:2 Speak to the children of Israel, saying, Designate the cities of refuge, concerning which I spoke to you through Moses,
20:3 So that the manslayer who kills a person by mistake and unwittingly may flee there. And they will be to you as a refuge from the avenger of blood.
20:4 And he shall flee to one of these cities and 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 shall take him into the city to themselves and give him a place; and he shall dwell among them.
20:5 And if the avenger of blood pursues after him, they shall not deliver the manslayer into his hand, for he struck his neighbor unwittingly and had not hated him previously.
20:6 And he shall dwell in that city until he can stand before the assembly for a judgment, until the death of the high priest who is at that time; then the manslayer shall return and enter into his own city and into his own house, into the city from which he fled.
20:7 And they set apart Kedesh in Galilee in the hill country of Naphtali and Shechem in the hill country of Ephraim and Kiriath-arba (this is Hebron) in the hill country of Judah.
20:8 And across the Jordan at Jericho, to the east, they designated Bezer in the wilderness on 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.
20:9 These were the appointed cities for all the children of Israel and for the sojourner who sojourned among them, so that anyone who killed a person by mistake might flee there and not die at the hand of the avenger of blood until he stood before the assembly.
21:1 Then the heads of the fathers’ houses of the Levites approached Eleazar the priest and Joshua the son of Nun and the heads of the fathers’ houses of the tribes of the children of Israel,
21:2 And they spoke to them in Shiloh in the land of Canaan, saying, Jehovah commanded through Moses that we be given cities to dwell in with their pasture lands for our cattle.
21:3 So the children of Israel gave the Levites, according to the commandment of Jehovah, these cities with their pasture lands out of their inheritance:
21:4 And the lot came out for the families of the Kohathites. And to the children of Aaron the priest who were of the Levites there went by lot thirteen cities out of the tribe of Judah and out of the tribe of the Simeonites and out of the tribe of Benjamin.
21:5 And to the rest of the children of Kohath there went by lot ten cities out of the families of the tribe of Ephraim and out of the tribe of Dan and out of the half-tribe of Manasseh.
21:6 And to the children of Gershon there went by lot thirteen cities out of the families of the tribe of Issachar and out of the tribe of Asher and out of the tribe of Naphtali and out of the half-tribe of Manasseh in Bashan.
21:7 To the children of Merari according to their families there went twelve cities out of the tribe of Reuben and out of the tribe of Gad and out of the tribe of Zebulun.