Joshua 20 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.

Then Yahweh said to Joshua:

"Tell the Israelites: Designate the cities of refuge that I told you about through Moses —

so that anyone who kills a person accidentally, without meaning to, can flee there. These cities will be your protection from the dead person's family avenger.

"The person must flee to one of these cities, stand at the entrance of the city gate, and explain their case to the city elders. The elders must then take them into the city and give them a place to live among them.

If the family avenger comes after them, the elders must not hand the killer over, because they struck their neighbor down without meaning to and without any prior hatred toward them.

The killer must stay in that city until they stand trial before the community, and until the current high priest dies. After that, the killer may go back to their own city and their own home — the city they originally fled from."

So they set apart Kedesh in the Galilee region, in the hill country of Naphtali; Shechem in the hill country of Ephraim; and Kiriath-arba (that is, Hebron) in the hill country of Judah.

And on the east side of the Jordan, across from Jericho, they designated Bezer in the wilderness plateau in the territory of Reuben; Ramoth in Gilead in the territory of Gad; and Golan in Bashan in the territory of Manasseh.

These were the designated cities for all the Israelites and for any foreigner living among them, so that anyone who accidentally killed a person could flee there and not be killed by the family avenger before standing trial before the community.