Deuteronomy 19:8-10

19:8 If the Lord your God enlarges your borders as he promised your ancestors ¹  and gives you all the land he pledged to them, ²  19:9 and then you are careful to observe all these commandments ³  I am giving ⁴  you today (namely, to love the Lord your God and to always walk in his ways), then you must add three more cities ⁵  to these three. 19:10 You must not shed innocent blood ⁶  in your land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, for that would make you guilty. ⁷ 

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¹ tn Heb “fathers.”

² tn Heb “he said to give to your ancestors.” The pronoun has been used in the translation instead for stylistic reasons.

³ tn Heb “all this commandment.” This refers here to the entire covenant agreement of the Book of Deuteronomy as encapsulated in the Shema (Deut 6:4-5).

⁴ tn Heb “commanding”; NAB “which I enjoin on you today.”

⁵ sn You will add three more cities. Since these are alluded to nowhere else and thus were probably never added, this must be a provision for other cities of refuge should they be needed (cf. v. 8). See P. C. Craigie, Deuteronomy (NICOT), 267.

⁶ tn Heb “innocent blood must not be shed.” The Hebrew phrase דָּם נָקִי (dam naqiy) 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).

⁷ tn Heb “and blood will be upon you” (cf. KJV, ASV); NRSV “thereby bringing bloodguilt upon you.”