Deuteronomy 19:3

You shall prepare a high road, and divide your limit which the Lord your God bestoweth upon you, that any manslayer may flee thither.

prepare the road that the city be in a place served by usable and inhabited roadways.

apportion into three Either You will divide the land into three parts, at the points of these cities, or You must place the cities each in its own third of the country.

ושלשת את גבול ארך, “you shall divide your land into three sections.” According to tradition, the total area of the Holy Land comprises 400 by 400 Parsah (1 parsah is equivalent to 4480 square meters.). According to the Talmud in tractate Makkot, folio 9, the word ושלשת means that you are to divide this area into three parts 100 parsah from Hebron south 100 , 100 parsah from north from Hebron to Sh’chem (Safed); 100 parsah from Sh’chem to Kadesh. From there to the north 100 parsah. If this is correct, it would follow that the people dwelling between Hebron and Safed were much closer to the nearest city of refuge than people living in any other section of the land. The answer provided by Abbaye is that the region around Safed was known to harbour many killers. He based himself on Hoseah 6,9: חבר כהנים דרך ירצחו שכמה כי זמה עשו, “the gang of priest is like the ambuscade of bandits who murder on the road to Sh’chem, for they have encouraged depravity.” The expression “gang of priests,“ sounds peculiar. What is meant by this? According to Rabbi Elazar this was a band of people who ganged up on priests who illegally raided storage barns of grain to help themselves to the portions meant for priests which the farmers had not distributed although the Torah bids them to do this. Seeing that their conduct was liable to result in at least unintentional killing, the cities of refuge were placed in their vicinity. In the region between kadesh and Hebron, murders also occurred frequently so that cities of refuge were placed there to allow those who had not killed deliberately to take refuge there. If you were to ask that if even on the west bank of Israel there were numerous instances of killings, why did Moses place half the cities of refuge there? We had stated originally that he did so because he felt that that area was more lawless than the “holy” area west of the Jordan? We have to fall back on the explanation that the area around Gilead was even more plagued by violent people than the area west of the Jordan. The prophet Hoseah, in the verse before the one we quoted described Gilead as “drenched in blood.”