"Command the People of Israel to give the Levites as their part of the total inheritance towns to live in. Make sure there is plenty of pasture around the towns.
The outside borders of the pasture are to measure three thousand feet on each of the four sides--east, south, west, and north--with the town at the center. Each city will be supplied with pasture.
"Six of these towns that you give the Levites will be asylum-cities to which anyone who accidentally kills another person may flee for asylum. In addition, you will give them forty-two other towns--
The towns that you give the Levites from the common inheritance of the People of Israel are to be taken in proportion to the size of each tribe--many towns from a tribe that has many, few from a tribe that has few."
for the People of Israel, for the foreigner, and for any occasional visitors or guests--six asylum-cities to run to for anyone who accidentally kills another.
or he accidentally drops a stone tool--a maul or hammer, say--and it hits and kills someone he didn't even know was there, and there's no suspicion that there was bad blood between them,
It's the task of the community to save the killer from the hand of the avenger--the community is to return him to his asylum-city to which he fled. He must stay there until the death of the High Priest who was anointed with the holy oil.
and the avenger finds him outside the borders of his asylum-city, the avenger has a right to kill the murderer. And he's not considered guilty of murder.
"So it's important that he stay in his asylum-city until the death of the High Priest. After the death of the High Priest he is free to return to his own place.
"And don't accept bribe money for anyone who has fled to an asylum-city so as to permit him to go back and live in his own place before the death of the High Priest.
"Don't pollute the land in which you live. Murder pollutes the land. The land can't be cleaned up of the blood of murder except through the blood of the murderer.