³ Mark out the roads to them^[a] and divide the regions of the land the Lord your God is apportioning to you into three parts. These cities are the places to which a person who has killed can escape. ⁴ Here is the rule concerning a person who killed someone and is permitted to escape to one of these cities and live:

If it is someone who killed his neighbor accidentally, without having hated that person previously; ⁵ or if someone goes into the forest with a neighbor to chop some wood, and while swinging an ax to cut down the tree, the axhead flies off its handle and hits the neighbor, who subsequently dies—these kinds of killers may escape to one of these cities and live.