Q: What is meant by “You shall not
kill.” in the fifth commandment? Is
there ever a time when it is acceptable to kill?
This commandment from Exodus 20:13 is
sometimes translated as “You shall not kill,” most notably by the King James
Version and the New American Bible.
Although it is more commonly translated as “You shall not Murder.” The difference between killing in general and
the more specific act of murder is that murder is a killing that is unlawful.
In order for a killing to be
considered murder in the biblical sense, there are three requirements: First, the killing must be intentional;
second, it must be a human that is killed; and third, the killing must be
unlawful or unjust.
For example, if the fifth commandment
forbade all killing, Christians and Jews would be required to live life as
vegetarians. If taken to its extreme, a
prohibition against killing in general would ultimately forbid Christians from
farming, driving, and many other everyday activities which have the potential
to cause the death of one creature or another.
When we look to the rest of the
Bible, we see that God gave permission to Noah that he could kill animals in
order to eat them. Elsewhere, we see God
specifying that certain animals are to be sacrificed as part of the Old
Testament law. In the Old Testament law,
the killing of an animal that belongs to another person is forbidden, but it is
treated as a property crime rather than a murder.
There are a limited number of
situations in which the Bible considers even the killing of another human not
to be a sin. The first of these is the
case of capital punishment. In several
portions of the Old Testament law, God specifically commands that the leaders
of Israel put people to death for certain crimes, such as murder or
treason. We still see this law in use
today by our federal government and by many states of our nation.
The second of these cases is that of
a true accident, where the murder did not occur intentionally, but was the
result of a mistake on the part of the killer and was not intended to cause
death. This is also reflected in our
modern laws where the accidental nature of a killing can reduce or eliminate
punishment for the killer.
The third case is that of
self-defense. The Bible never condemns a
person for killing another as a result of defending himself or his family from
a robber, intruder, or another who is seeking to harm them.
The last circumstance in which
killing is not considered murder by the Bible is the case of a soldier killing in
war. On numerous occasions in the Old
Testament, God commands the army of Israel to kill the enemy who is attacking
them.
St. Augustine and Martin Luther both
wrote at length concerning the righteousness or unrighteousness of a Christian
serving as a soldier and taking part in killing as part of that vocation. The general consensus arrived at was that it
is acceptable for a government to make war for the purpose of defending the
people of their nation and that it is even a noble vocation for a Christian to
serve as a soldier for the purpose of defending his neighbors, even though that
may involve killing soldiers of the enemy army.
Under these limited circumstances, a
killing would not be considered murder from a moral perspective, but otherwise,
the Bible considers all instances of one human directly causing the death of
another to be murder. In fact, the Bible
even considered the person who desires to murder another person to be guilty of
murder in God’s eyes. (1 John 3:15)
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