This Deuteronomy 19 quiz tests one of the most procedural chapters in the Mosaic law: three cities of refuge, the boundary stone, and the courtroom standard of two or three witnesses. It runs naturally with the Deuteronomy 18 quiz and the Deuteronomy 17 quiz, which set up the priestly and judicial framework this chapter assumes. For broader practice, the hardest Bible trivia questions and our entire Bible quiz push the test wider, while what Moses knew that most Christians don’t goes underneath the legal surface.
Deuteronomy 19 Quiz Questions and Answers
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Answer 1: D. The five pairings are life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot. The order is fixed and the items are specific. Substitutions like finger, ear, tongue, or knee do not appear in this verse.
KJV Reference: Deuteronomy 19:21. “And thine eye shall not pity; but life shall go for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.”
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Answer 2: A. The illustration is precise. Two neighbours go into the wood to hew wood, the axe head slips from its handle, and the head strikes the neighbour fatally. No malice, no quarrel, no warning. The other options are plausible accidents but none of them is the case the verse names.
KJV Reference: Deuteronomy 19:5. “As when a man goeth into the wood with his neighbour to hew wood, and his hand fetcheth a stroke with the axe to cut down the tree, and the head slippeth from the helve, and lighteth upon his neighbour, that he die.”
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Answer 3: E. The standard is two or three witnesses, and one witness is explicitly insufficient. The same numerical standard is later carried into the New Testament for both formal accusation and church discipline.
KJV Reference: Deuteronomy 19:15. “One witness shall not rise up against a man for any iniquity, or for any sin… at the mouth of two witnesses, or at the mouth of three witnesses, shall the matter be established.”
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Answer 4: C. The verb is removing, not striking, carving, or trespassing. The concern is property boundaries that the previous generation has fixed, which a man would shift in secret to enlarge his own inheritance at his neighbour’s loss.
KJV Reference: Deuteronomy 19:14. “Thou shalt not remove thy neighbour’s landmark, which they of old time have set in thine inheritance.”
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Answer 5: B. The reasoning is purely practical. Distance plus a hot-tempered avenger would equal the slayer’s death before he ever reached safety. The road system existed to make the law of refuge actually work.
KJV Reference: Deuteronomy 19:6. “Lest the avenger of the blood pursue the slayer, while his heart is hot, and overtake him, because the way is long, and slay him.”
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Answer 6: A. The condition is moral and covenantal, not geographic or political. Enlargement of territory was tied to obedience, and only an obedient Israel would receive a wider land that required additional cities.
KJV Reference: Deuteronomy 19:9. “If thou shalt keep all these commandments… to love the LORD thy God, and to walk ever in his ways; then shalt thou add three cities more for thee, beside these three.”
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Answer 7: C. The elders of the murderer’s own city executed the extradition, then handed him to the avenger. The structure prevents both vigilante violence and impunity through flight.
KJV Reference: Deuteronomy 19:12. “Then the elders of his city shall send and fetch him thence, and deliver him into the hand of the avenger of blood, that he may die.”
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Answer 8: B. The qualifier is the absence of prior hatred. The act must be ignorant, the relationship unhostile. Status (stranger, Levite, kinless) is irrelevant. Motive is everything.
KJV Reference: Deuteronomy 19:4. “Whoso killeth his neighbour ignorantly, whom he hated not in time past.”
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Answer 9: D. The accidental death of the manslayer at the avenger’s hand would itself be the shedding of innocent blood, leaving guilt on the land. The road system was a national safeguard against bloodguilt.
KJV Reference: Deuteronomy 19:10. “That innocent blood be not shed in thy land, which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance, and so blood be upon thee.”
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Answer 10: E. The forum is sacred and judicial together: the LORD, the priests, and the judges. False testimony is therefore not merely a civil wrong but a violation committed under God’s direct gaze.
KJV Reference: Deuteronomy 19:17. “Then both the men, between whom the controversy is, shall stand before the LORD, before the priests and the judges, which shall be in those days.”
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Answer 11: B. Three cities at first, with three more contingent on enlargement. The number six (often associated with cities of refuge in Joshua and Numbers) is the eventual total, not the initial command in this chapter.
KJV Reference: Deuteronomy 19:2. “Thou shalt separate three cities for thee in the midst of thy land, which the LORD thy God giveth thee to possess it.”
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Answer 12: E. The penalty was the exact penalty he had sought against his brother. If he had pursued death, death fell on him. The principle eliminates any incentive for false witness, since the lie returns intact.
KJV Reference: Deuteronomy 19:19. “Then shall ye do unto him, as he had thought to have done unto his brother: so shalt thou put the evil away from among you.”
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Answer 13: D. Hear, fear, and commit no more. The same three-part deterrent formula appears in Deuteronomy 17:13 regarding presumptuous offenders. Public judgment is meant to produce public restraint.
KJV Reference: Deuteronomy 19:20. “And those which remain shall hear, and fear, and shall henceforth commit no more any such evil among you.”
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Answer 14: A. The city of refuge does not protect a true murderer. Pity in such a case becomes complicity, and the land would carry his bloodguilt. The waiting-for-the-high-priest provision belongs to Numbers 35, not this chapter.
KJV Reference: Deuteronomy 19:13. “Thine eye shall not pity him, but thou shalt put away the guilt of innocent blood from Israel, that it may go well with thee.”
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Answer 15: C. The duty is investigative, not procedural. Diligent inquisition meant rigorous examination of evidence and testimony, since the penalty awaiting a proven false witness was severe.
KJV Reference: Deuteronomy 19:18. “And the judges shall make diligent inquisition: and, behold, if the witness be a false witness, and hath testified falsely against his brother.”
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Answer 16: E. Three parts, one city per part. The geographic distribution makes refuge accessible from any region of the land within a single day’s flight.
KJV Reference: Deuteronomy 19:3. “Thou shalt prepare thee a way, and divide the coasts of thy land, which the LORD thy God giveth thee to inherit, into three parts.”
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Answer 17: B. The KJV’s image is “while his heart is hot.” The chapter assumes that grief and rage will cloud judgment in the early hours after a death, and the road to the city of refuge must outpace that heat.
KJV Reference: Deuteronomy 19:6. “Lest the avenger of the blood pursue the slayer, while his heart is hot, and overtake him.”
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Answer 18: C. Hatred, premeditation (lying in wait), and the violent act together establish murder. The verse builds the legal definition that excludes the murderer from the protection of the city of refuge.
KJV Reference: Deuteronomy 19:11. “But if any man hate his neighbour, and lie in wait for him, and rise up against him, and smite him mortally that he die, and fleeth into one of these cities.”
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Answer 19: A. The KJV’s phrase is austere: “that which is wrong.” Not slander, not perjury, not a wicked report. Simply wrong. The plainness of the wording matches the simplicity of the standard the judges must apply.
KJV Reference: Deuteronomy 19:16. “If a false witness rise up against any man to testify against him that which is wrong.”
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Answer 20: D. Enlargement of the coast rests on the patriarchal oath, not on any later instrument. The same promise to the fathers underwrites the contingency for the additional three cities of refuge in verse 9.
KJV Reference: Deuteronomy 19:8. “And if the LORD thy God enlarge thy coast, as he hath sworn unto thy fathers, and give thee all the land which he promised to give unto thy fathers.”
The chapter that opens roads to protect the innocent closes them on the false witness.
