Deuteronomy 19 · a question people ask
Were there ever nine cities of refuge?
Deuteronomy 19 speaks of three more: "If the LORD your God enlarges your border, as he has sworn to your fathers… and if you keep all this commandment to do it… then you shall add three cities more for yourselves, in addition to these three" (19:8-9). Numbers had six: "You shall give three cities beyond the Jordan, and you shall give three cities in the land of Canaan" (Numbers 35:14). Joshua names six, three west of the Jordan and three east (Joshua 20:7-8), and no later passage tells of three more being set apart. The Bible doesn't say why. What the text does give is the two conditions: the border enlarged "as he has sworn to your fathers" (19:8), and a people keeping the command "to love the LORD your God, and to walk ever in his ways" (19:9).
The verses
“If the LORD your God enlarges your border, as he has sworn to your fathers, and gives you all the land which he promised to give to your fathers; and if you keep all this commandment to do it, which I command you today, to love the LORD your God, and to walk ever in his ways, then you shall add three cities more for yourselves, in addition to these three.”
“You shall give three cities beyond the Jordan, and you shall give three cities in the land of Canaan. They shall be cities of refuge.”
“They set apart Kedesh in Galilee in the hill country of Naphtali, Shechem in the hill country of Ephraim, and Kiriath Arba (also called Hebron) in the hill country of Judah. Beyond the Jordan at Jericho eastward, they assigned Bezer in the wilderness in the plain out of the tribe of Reuben, Ramoth in Gilead out of the tribe of Gad, and Golan in Bashan out of the tribe of Manasseh.”