1“When YHWH, your God, will cut off the nations whose land YHWH, your God, is giving you, and you’ll dispossess them and live in their cities and in their houses,
2you shall distinguish three cities within your land that YHWH, your God, is giving you to take possession of it.
3You shall prepare the way and divide the border of your land that YHWH, your God, will give you as a legacy into three sections, and it will be for any murderer to flee there.
4And this is the case of the manslayer who will flee there and live: one who will strike his neighbor without knowing, when he did not hate him from the day before yesterday;
19:4. from the day before yesterday. Meaning: he had no prior malice toward the person whom he killed.
5and one who will come with his neighbor into the forest to cut down trees, and his hand will be moved with the axe to cut down the tree, and the axe head will come off the wood and find his neighbor, and he dies. He shall flee to one of these cities and live.
6In case an avenger of blood will pursue the manslayer when his heart will be hot and will catch up to him because the way will be long, and he’ll strike him mortally though he does not have a sentence of death, because he did not hate him from the day before yesterday,
7on account of this I command you, saying, ‘You shall distinguish three cities.’
8And if YHWH, your God, will widen your border as He swore to your fathers and will give you all the land that He spoke to give to your fathers,
9when you’ll observe all of this commandment to do it, that which I command you today, to love YHWH, your God, and to go in His ways every day, then you shall add three more cities to these three.
10So innocent blood will not be spilled within your land that YHWH, your God, is giving you as a legacy, and blood would be on you.
19:10. blood would be on you. Meaning: you would incur guilt for spilled blood.
11“But if there will be a man who hates his neighbor and will lie in wait for him and get up against him and strike him mortally, and he dies, and he will flee to one of these cities,
12then his city’s elders shall send and take him from there and put him in the hand of the avenger of blood, so he will die.
13Your eye shall not pity him. And you shall burn away the innocent blood from Israel, and it will be well with you.
14“You shall not move your neighbor’s landmark that the first ones set, in your legacy that you will have in the land that YHWH, your God, is giving you to take possession of it.
19:14. your legacy that you will have in the land. This chapter gives laws protecting lives and property, which will apply once the people arrive in the land. Most of the Torah thus looks toward the well-being of the land from outside it. Only about 29 of the Torah’s 187 chapters take place in the promised land. Moses never sets foot in the land. And the phrase “Land of Israel” never occurs in the Torah. (The land acquires this name only after the people of Israel have settled there. It first occurs in 1 Sam 13:19.) Yet the Torah’s story is focused on and directed toward Israel constantly. It is the promise of the covenant with Abraham. The promise is renewed to Isaac and Jacob. Jacob’s body is returned from Egypt to be buried there. Joseph asks to be taken back for burial there someday as well. And almost the entire content of Exodus through Numbers is the story of the people’s liberation and journey home. The Torah thus already relates to the experience of the Jewish people in the postbiblical world: For the last two millennia most of the Jews have lived outside the promised land. They have lived all over the world and have been good citizens of the countries where they settled while having affection for the land of Israel, a consciousness of their origin there, and a desire to contribute to it, travel there, and seek its well-being.
15“One witness shall not get up against a man for any crime or for any sin, in any sin that one will commit. On the word of two witnesses or on the word of three witnesses a case shall stand up.
16If a malicious witness will get up against a man to testify a misrepresentation against him,
17and the two people who have the dispute shall stand in front of YHWH, in front of the priests and the judges who will be in those days,
18and the judges will inquire well, and, here, the witness is a lying witness, he testified a lie against his brother,
19then you shall do to him as he schemed to do to his brother. So you shall burn away what is bad from among you.
20And those who remain will listen and fear and won’t continue to do anything like this bad thing anymore among you.
21And your eye shall not pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.
19:21. life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. See the comments on Exod 21:23 and Lev 24:20.