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10 You must not shed innocent blood[a] in your land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, for that would make you guilty.[b] 11 However, suppose a person hates someone else[c] and stalks him, attacks him, kills him,[d] and then flees to one of these cities. 12 The elders of his own city must send for him and remove him from there to deliver him over to the blood avenger[e] to die.

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Footnotes

  1. Deuteronomy 19:10 tn Heb “innocent blood must not be shed.” The Hebrew phrase דָּם נָקִי (dam naqi) 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).
  2. Deuteronomy 19:10 tn Heb “and blood will be upon you” (cf. KJV, ASV); NRSV “thereby bringing bloodguilt upon you.”
  3. Deuteronomy 19:11 tn Heb “his neighbor.”
  4. Deuteronomy 19:11 tn Heb “rises against him and strikes him fatally.”
  5. Deuteronomy 19:12 tn The גֹאֵל הַדָּם (goʾel 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.

10 Do this so that innocent blood(A) will not be shed in your land, which the Lord your God is giving you as your inheritance, and so that you will not be guilty of bloodshed.(B)

11 But if out of hate someone lies in wait, assaults and kills a neighbor,(C) and then flees to one of these cities, 12 the killer shall be sent for by the town elders, be brought back from the city, and be handed over to the avenger of blood to die.

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