'Cities' in the Bible

“Then all of you approached me and said, ‘Let us send men [into the land] before us, so that they may explore and search the area for us, and bring back to us word regarding the way we should go, and the cities we should enter.’

Where can we go up? Our brothers (spies) have made our hearts melt [in fear] and demoralized us by saying, “The people are bigger and taller than we; the cities are large, and fortified [all the way up] to heaven. And besides, we saw the [giant-like] sons of the Anakim there.”’

At the same time we took all his cities and utterly destroyed every city—men, women and children. We left no survivor.

We took only the cattle as plunder for ourselves and the spoil of the cities which we had captured.

Only you did not go near the land of the sons of Ammon, all along the river Jabbok and the cities of the hill country, and wherever the Lord our God had forbidden us.

We captured all his cities at that time; there was not a city which we did not take from them: sixty cities, the whole region of Argob, the kingdom of Og in Bashan.

All these cities were fortified and unassailable with their high walls, gates, and bars; in addition, [there were] a very great number of unwalled villages.

But we took all the cattle and the spoil of the cities as plunder for ourselves.

all the cities of the plain and all Gilead and all Bashan, as far as Salecah and Edrei, cities of the kingdom of Og in Bashan.”

“So we took possession of this land at that time. I gave the territory from Aroer, which is by the valley of the Arnon, along with half of the hill country of Gilead and its cities to the Reubenites and to the Gadites.

But your wives and your children and your cattle—I know that you have much livestock—shall remain in your cities which I have given you,

Then Moses set apart three cities [of refuge] beyond the Jordan toward the rising of the sun (eastward),

so that someone who committed manslaughter could flee there, [that is, a person] who killed his neighbor unintentionally and without previously having hostility toward him, and that by escaping to one of these cities he might [claim the right of asylum and] save his life:

“Then it shall come about when the Lord your God brings you into the land which He swore (solemnly promised) to [give] your fathers—to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—to give you, [a land with] great and splendid cities which you did not build,

“Hear, O Israel! You are crossing the Jordan today to go in to dispossess nations greater and more powerful than you, great cities fortified to heaven,

“If you hear [it said] in one of your cities, which the Lord your God gives you to live in,

“When the Lord your God cuts off (destroys) the nations whose land He is giving you, and you dispossess them and live in their cities and in their houses,

you shall designate three cities for yourself in the central area of the land, which the Lord your God is giving you to possess.

as [for example] when a man goes into the forest with his neighbor to cut wood, and his hand swings the axe to cut down the tree, but the iron head slips off the wooden handle and hits his companion and he dies—the offender may escape to one of these cities and live;

Therefore, I command you, saying, ‘You shall set aside three cities [of refuge] for yourself.’

if you keep and carefully observe all these commandments which I am commanding you today, to love the Lord your God, and to walk [that is, to live each and every day] always in His ways—then you shall add three more cities [of refuge] for yourself, besides these three,

“But if there is a man who hates his neighbor and lies in wait and ambush for him and attacks him and strikes him down so that he dies, and the assailant escapes to one of these cities,

That is what you shall do to all the cities that are very far away from you, which are not among the cities of these nations nearby [which you are to dispossess].

Only in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes.

then your elders and judges shall go out and measure the distance to the cities which are around the dead person.