Deuteronomy 19: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Moses gives instructions for life in the land after Israel takes it. Three cities are to be set apart, with roads built to them, so that a person who kills someone by accident can flee there and be safe from the dead person's avenging relative; three more are to be added if God enlarges the territory and the people keep his commands. A murderer who kills on purpose gets no such protection and is handed over to die. The chapter then forbids moving a neighbor's boundary marker, requires two or three witnesses to establish a charge, and orders that a proven false witness receive the punishment he tried to bring on the accused.

Claim by Claim

1. 19:1
   • The LORD your God will cut off the nations whose land the LORD your God is giving you.
   • You will dispossess those nations.
   • You will dwell in their cities and in their houses.
2. 19:2
   • You are to set apart three cities for yourself.
   • The three cities are to be in the midst of your land.
   • The LORD your God is giving you that land to possess it.
3. 19:3
   • You are to prepare the road for yourself.
   • You are to divide into three parts the territory of your land that the LORD your God gives you to inherit.
   • The purpose is that any manslayer may flee there.
4. 19:4
   • This is the rule concerning the manslayer who flees there so that he may live.
   • It applies to one who kills his neighbor without knowledge.
   • It applies to one who did not hate his neighbor previously.
5. 19:5
   • An example is a man who goes into the forest with his neighbor to cut wood.
   • His hand swings the axe to cut down the tree.
   • The iron head slips off the wooden handle.
   • The iron head strikes his neighbor.
   • The neighbor dies.
   • That man shall flee to one of these cities.
   • That man shall live.
6. 19:6
   • The reason is so that the avenger of blood does not pursue the manslayer.
   • The avenger of blood pursues while his heart is hot.
   • The avenger might overtake him because the way is long.
   • The avenger might strike him dead.
   • The manslayer has no sentence of death.
   • The manslayer did not hate the victim previously.
7. 19:7
   • Moses says he is commanding you for this reason.
   • You are to set apart three cities for yourself.
8. 19:8
   • The LORD your God may enlarge your territory.
   • The LORD swore to your fathers to enlarge your territory.
   • The LORD may give you all the land which he spoke of giving to your fathers.
9. 19:9
   • This depends on your keeping all this commandment to do it.
   • Moses is commanding this commandment today.
   • The commandment is to love the LORD your God.
   • The commandment is to walk in his ways all the days.
   • Then you shall add three more cities for yourself beside these three.
10. 19:10
    • The purpose is that innocent blood not be shed within your land.
    • The LORD your God is giving you that land as an inheritance.
    • Otherwise bloodguilt would be upon you.
11. 19:11
    • A man may hate his neighbor.
    • He may lie in wait for him.
    • He may rise up against him.
    • He may strike him fatally so that he dies.
    • He may flee to one of these cities.
12. 19:12
    • The elders of his city shall send and take him from there.
    • They shall hand him over to the avenger of blood.
    • He shall die.
13. 19:13
    • Your eye shall not pity him.
    • You shall purge the guilt of innocent blood from Israel.
    • It will go well with you.
14. 19:14
    • You shall not move your neighbor's boundary marker.
    • Former generations set that boundary marker.
    • The boundary marker is in your inheritance that you will inherit.
    • The inheritance is in the land the LORD your God is giving you to possess it.
15. 19:15
    • A single witness shall not stand against a man for any iniquity or any sin, for any offense he commits.
    • A matter shall be established by the mouth of two witnesses or by the mouth of three witnesses.
16. 19:16
    • A malicious witness may rise up against a man.
    • The witness testifies against him falsely.
17. 19:17
    • Both men who have the dispute shall stand before the LORD.
    • They shall stand before the priests and the judges who are in office in those days.
18. 19:18
    • The judges shall investigate thoroughly.
    • The witness may be found to be a false witness.
    • He may have testified falsely against his brother.
19. 19:19
    • You shall do to him as he intended to do to his brother.
    • You shall purge the evil from among you.
20. 19:20
    • Those who remain shall hear and fear.
    • They shall not again do such an evil thing among you.
21. 19:21
    • Your eye shall not pity.
    • Life shall go for life.
    • Eye for eye.
    • Tooth for tooth.
    • Hand for hand.
    • Foot for foot.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

19:1

"The nations" means the peoples already living in Canaan, whose land Israel is being told it will take over. The speaker throughout this chapter is Moses, addressing Israel before they cross into that land.

19:2

These are what the rest of the Bible calls "cities of refuge." A person who had killed someone and reached one of them was safe from private revenge until his case could be heard. Six were eventually named, three east of the Jordan and three west of it (Joshua 20).

19:3

The roads had to be built and kept passable so a fleeing man could reach a refuge city fast, and the land divided into three districts so nobody lived too far from one.

19:4

"By accident" renders a Hebrew phrase meaning "without knowledge", without intending the death. There was no police investigation or forensic evidence, so the practical test of intent was whether the two men were known to have been enemies beforehand. That is why "had not hated him before" keeps recurring.

19:5

A concrete example of a death nobody intended: axe heads were separate pieces of metal wedged onto a wooden handle, and they worked loose with use and could fly off mid-swing.

19:6

The avenging relative (Hebrew go'el ha-dam, "the redeemer of blood") was the dead person's nearest male kinsman. In a society with no police and no public prosecutor, tracking down and killing whoever had taken his relative's life was his recognized duty and his family's right. This law does not invent that custom; it limits it, by giving a man who killed accidentally somewhere to run.

19:8

The promise of a larger territory refers to borders wider than Israel ever actually held (see Genesis 15:18). The practical point is that a bigger country would put the three cities out of easy reach, so three more would be needed.

19:9

Three cities east of the Jordan had already been set apart in Deuteronomy 4, and Joshua 20 eventually lists six in all. The extra three here are conditional: they only happen if Israel's territory grows larger.

19:10

In Israelite thinking, blood wrongly shed left a stain of guilt on the whole community and on the land itself until the matter was properly settled. That is what "held guilty for that death" means: not personal remorse, but a debt the community carries.

19:11

Lying in wait is the detail that decides everything. Planning the attack in advance is what separates murder from the axe-head accident in verse 5, and it is why the cities of refuge do not protect this man.

19:12

The elders were the senior heads of households who handled a town's legal business, normally meeting in the open space just inside the town gate. Judging whether a killing was murder or accident was their job, the refuge city gave shelter, not a verdict.

19:13

"Do not feel sorry for him" translates the Hebrew idiom "your eye shall not pity him." It is a standard legal formula warning judges and community not to let sympathy quietly set aside a sentence the law required.

19:14

Fields were marked off by stones or piled earth at the corners and edges, no fences, no maps, no written deeds. Shifting a marker a few feet at a time was a way of stealing a neighbor's land that was almost impossible to prove, which is why it needed a law of its own. Since land was held as a family inheritance rather than bought and sold freely, the theft was permanent.

19:15

Cases were decided on spoken testimony alone, so this rule was the main safeguard against one accuser destroying a person. "Two or three" means a minimum of two.

19:16

The Hebrew phrase is literally "a witness of violence", a witness whose testimony is itself an act of harm against the accused.

19:17

"Stand before the LORD" means to appear at the central sanctuary, where the priests served; difficult cases were referred there instead of being settled by the local elders. "Who are serving at that time" recognizes that the men holding these offices would change from generation to generation.

19:18

"Make diligent inquisition" is 1611 English for investigate thoroughly. The word "inquisition" then simply meant an inquiry, and carried none of the associations with church courts and torture that it picked up later.

19:19

"Remove the evil from among you" is a recurring formula in Deuteronomy. It means ridding the community of the offense by actually carrying out the sentence, not merely condemning it.

19:21

"Life for life, eye for eye" is a legal formula found in law codes across the ancient Near East; it is often called by its Latin name, lex talionis, "the law of like for like." In such codes it sets a ceiling as much as a floor: the penalty must match the injury and may not exceed it, which rules out escalating blood feuds. Elsewhere in Israelite law, injuries between people are commonly settled by payment (Exodus 21:18-27), and later Jewish legal tradition understood this formula as a measure of compensation owed rather than literal maiming.