You Can Kill, But Not Murder: The Case for the Ten Commandments

Ask almost anyone to recite the commandment in the Ten Commandments that prohibits taking a life and you will be told, "Thou Shall Not Kill."

That is the King James translation of the sixth commandment. It is a magnificent translation. But this one has led to much moral confusion.

Yesterday, PragerUniversity.com, which has had more than 20 million views this year, released 11 courses (each five-minutes long) -- the Ten Commandments and an introduction.

The reason we made these video courses is that I believe that everything we need to make a good world and rid ourselves of evil is contained in the Ten Commandments.

For the next few weeks, my column will be selected transcripts of the courses, all of which I present.

Whatever your faith, or if you have no faith, I invite you to watch the videos at www.prageru.com -- from the introduction through the tenth, or any of the Ten. They are cleverly animated with text and graphics.

Here is the text of commandment six -- explaining why the King James translation is wrong:

You would think that of all the Ten Commandments the one that needs the least explaining is the sixth, because it seems so clear. It is the one that the King James Bible, the most widely used English translation of the Bible, translates as, "Thou shall not kill."

Yet, the truth is the quite the opposite. This is probably the least well understood of the Ten Commandments. The reason is that the Hebrew original does not say, "Do not kill." It says, "Do not murder." Both Hebrew and English have two words for taking a life -- one is "kill" (harag, in Hebrew) and the other is "murder" (ratzach in Hebrew).

On the other hand, murder can only mean one thing: The illegal or immoral taking of a human life. That's why we say, "I killed a mosquito," not, "I murdered a mosquito." And that's why we would say that "the worker was accidentally killed," not that "the worker was accidentally murdered."

So why did the King James translation of the Bible use the word "kill" rather than "murder"? Because 400 years ago, when the translation was made, "kill" was synonymous with "murder." As a result, some people don't realize that English has changed since 1610 and therefore think that the Ten Commandments prohibits all killing.

But, of course, it doesn't. If the Ten Commandments forbade killing, we would all have to be vegetarians, as killing animals would be prohibited. And we would all have to be pacifists -- since we could not kill even in self-defense.

However, you don't have to know how the English language has evolved to understand that the Ten Commandments could not have prohibited all killing. The very same part of the Bible that contains the Ten Commandments -- the Five Books of Moses, the Torah as it is known by Jews -- commands the death penalty for murder, allows killing in war, prescribes animal sacrifice and allows eating meat.

A correct understanding of the commandment against murder is crucial because, while virtually every modern translation correctly translates the commandment as "Do not murder," many people cite the King James translation to justify two positions that have no biblical basis: opposition to capital punishment and pacifism.

Regarding capital punishment and the Bible, as I note in my Prager University course on capital punishment, the only law that appears in each one of the Five Books of Moses is that murderers be put to death. Opponents of the death penalty are free to hold the view that all murderers should be allowed to live. But they are not free to cite the Bible to support their view.

Yet, many do. And they always cite the Commandment, "Do not kill." But that, as should now be abundantly clear, is not what the commandment says, and it is therefore an invalid argument.

As regards pacifism, the belief that it is always wrong to kill a human being, again, anyone is free to hold this position, as immoral as it may be. And what other word than "immoral" can one use to describe forbidding the killing of someone who is in the process of murdering innocent men, women and children, in, let's say, a movie theater or a school?

There is moral killing -- most obviously when done in self-defense against an aggressor -- and there is immoral killing. And the word for that is "murder."

The Ten Commandments are portrayed on two tablets. The five commandments on the second tablet all concern our treatment of fellow human beings.

The first one on that list is "Do not murder." Why? Because murder is the worst act a person can commit. The other four commandments -- prohibiting stealing, adultery, giving false testimony and coveting, are all serious offenses.

But murder leads the list because deliberately taking the life of an innocent person is the most terrible thing we can do. That is why it is so important to understand that the commandment prohibits murder, not all killing. When people liken killing in self-defense to murder -- such as when they equate killing the terrorist who is murdering people with the murders that the terrorist is committing -- all they are doing is reducing the evil that murder is. And when they use the Ten Commandments to justify that position, all they are doing is making the Ten Commandments, the moral foundation of Western Civilization, morally irrelevant.

The next time you hear someone cite, "Do not kill" when quoting the sixth commandment, gently but firmly explain that it actually says, "Do not murder."

>> The next time you hear someone cite, “Do not kill” when quoting the sixth commandment, gently but firmly explain that it actually says, “Do not murder.”

Yes, it comes down to what is in the individual’s heart.

Turn away with no prefaced intentions of harm enter with no intentions of harm but if attacked, you have a God given right to defend yourself from losing your own life by another’s hand.

I remember G. Gordon Liddy discussing this issue on his radio program back in the ‘90s.

He said that the Ten Commandments had not been translated correctly from the original text (in what? Aramaic?).

He said the correct translation was literally “thou shalt not do murder.”

yes, my friend last nite was lamenting all the insults and gossip/smears that goes around in pro-life circles here ... most started by so called pro-lifers who are ambitious, career minded people.

They do not believe that false witness covers insults and smears. Only court room testimony, they say.

Back to the issue at hand:
“You have heard that the ancients were told, ‘YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT MURDER ‘ and ‘Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court.’ 22”But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever says to his brother, ‘You good-for-nothing,’ shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.…”

True enough - I suspect the King James translators chose the word “kill” because they liked the somnolence of the word as well as the meaning which in 16th Century English was widely understood to be murder.

And the Bible is quite clear that we can kill - in self-defense, in war and for food. But deliberate murder is outlawed. The first five of the Ten Commandments deal with our relationship to God - how we should conduct our lives in front of Him. The second five of the Ten Commandments deal with our relationship to our fellow human beings. What we should do in living with them in society.

None of this is too difficult to understand. Its probably the greatest moral code ever issued and for thousands of years its been the yardstick of Western faith, ethics and culture.

Actually, if you want to be very precise, the Hebrew means “do not commit manslaughter or worse....” as accidental death due to carelessness was considered like murder.

Yet another example of the superiority of God’s law to any others...particularly as written in 1400 BC.

“It is immoral to produce human embryos intended for exploitation as disposable biological material.”

As a consequence of the respect and protection which must be ensured for the unborn child from the moment of conception, the law must provide appropriate penal sanctions for every deliberate violation of the child’s rights.”81

The virtue of temperance disposes us to avoid every kind of excess: the abuse of food, alcohol, tobacco, or medicine. Those incur grave guilt who, by drunkenness or a love of speed, endanger their own and others’ safety on the road, at sea, or in the air.

“Every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation.”110 A danger of modern warfare is that it provides the opportunity to those who possess modern scientific weapons especially atomic, biological, or chemical weapons - to commit such crimes

If you want to see the limits of what justifies lawful killing, look at the justifications the police use to fire their weapons. I believe it is true that more police than ever before are going rogue with the administrative use of abuse and lethal violence. But that is not what I’m talking about here - that is a different subject. And, I might add, the VAST percentage of police are strictly professional, self-controlled and appropriate.

But all that aside, just consider, in your mind, how far someone can go in being aggressive with a cop before the cop will appropriately draw on them. THAT’S WHAT WE’VE LOST. It’s not that the cops have more self-protective authority, it’s that everyone else has LESS. We need to get back to people being able to defend themselves as immediately and legally safely as the police do now.

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