These may be defensible or admirable views, but they’re certainly not biblical.” means ‘murder,’ not ‘kill.’ If the commandment proscribed killing as such, it would position Judaism against capital punishment and make it pacifist even in wartime. “The original Hebrew, lo tirtsah., is very clear, since the verb ratsah. I may not know Hebrew, but I know of many scholars who do, and they all agree that the proper translation of Exodus 20:13 is “Thou shalt not murder.” As Professor Berel Lang of Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut has noted: It should be translated as “Thou shalt not murder” rather than “Thou shalt not kill,” and there is quite a moral distinction between the two terms. The second major objection to citing Exodus 20:13 as a prohibition on killing is that it is based on an incorrect translation of the verse.20:13, etc…) also found in the Old Testament. witches, homosexuals, etc….see Exodus 22:18, Lev. Indeed, we have not even considered the many explicit references to the divinely approved executions of various sinners (e.g. In light of the extreme violence often advocated and sanctioned in the Old Testament, to make the claim that Exodus 20:13 forbids “killing” would require extraordinary and unbelievable hermeneutical gymnastics. “Happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us – he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.” (Psalm 137:9) Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’” (1 Samuel 15:3) “This is what the Lord Almighty says… ‘Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Completely destroy them…as the Lord your God has commanded you…” Deuteronomy 20:16 “…do not leave alive anything that breaths. Make no treaty with them and show them no mercy.” (Deuteronomy 7:1-2) “When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations…then you must destroy them totally. Indeed, if we treat the Hebrew Scriptures as a historical source, the ancient Israelites were often at war with their neighbors or enemies and so it is not surprising that their scriptural texts would reflect this violent reality. See Raymund Schwager, Must There Be Scapegoats? Violence and Redemption in the Bible (San Francisco: Harper, 1987), 60, see also 47. Yet it is he who gives the order to destroy human life,”
These passages do not have God himself do the killing he keeps somewhat aloof. Aside from the approximately one thousand verses in which Yahweh himself appears as the direct executioner of violent punishments, and the many texts in which the Lord delivers the criminal to the punisher’s sword, in over one hundred other passages Yahweh expressly gives the command to kill people. Schwager notes: “The passages are numerous where God explicitly commands someone to kill. It would make nonsense of much of the rest of the Old Testament.Īs Swiss Jesuit theologian Raymund Schwager has identified, the Old Testament contains 600 passages of explicit violence, around 1000 verses detailing God’s own violent punishments, and most significantly over 100 passages where God expressly commands others to kill people.There are a number of assumptions here that are either demonstrably false or (at the least) highly debatable, but among the most significant, perhaps, is the idea that Exodus 20:13 represents a biblical injunction against “killing.” There are two major problems with this assumption. Not because I am upset with the student, of course, but because I feel tempted to cover too much in my response. I find I often have to restrain myself a bit when I respond. Often, in such cases, students will cite the biblical commandment “Thou shalt not kill” (Exodus 20:13) as a proof-text supporting their assumptions that medieval Christians who participated in the crusades simply did not understand the Bible. Such students tend to associate New Testament Christianity with peace as Jesus himself famously called on others to turn the other cheek when confronted with violence. They ask because, as modern Christians with a post-Enlightenment understanding of their faith, they find the idea of God- or Jesus more specifically- supporting warfare to be troubling. When I lecture on the First Crusade in my courses at Florida State College at Jacksonville, I occasionally get a question from one of my students along the lines of “How could Christians do this?”
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