My thoughts on killing vs. murder - Christian Harding

I’ve been reading a lot of blogs, and they mention various attitudes towards killing. This is not my blog post, just something I wanted to type as various comments, but exercised self control until now...

Here’s my thoughts:

I believe we should step back from the word “kill” and think of what killing actually is. Is it immoral to kill? If so, why does God command it so many times in the Bible, David and Goliath, Joshua and Jericho, Samson with jawbone of an ass? In the Old Testament, there are a lot of actions with the death penalty attached. If a person carries out these sentences, is he violating the 6^th commandment?

I believe there has to be a difference between killing as used throughout the Bible, and the killing referred to in “thou shalt not kill.” I’ve included an excerpt from about.com where the Hebrew word, ratsach, used for kill in the 6^th commandment is mentioned and it is suggested it means murder rather than kill.

I will not tie this up in a pretty bow with my thoughts because what I think truly doesn't matter. What matters is what you think. So think.

Here are a few definitions and the excerpt from about.com…

From dictionary.reference.com:

Kill: "to deprive of life in any manner; cause the death of; slay."

Murder: "... murder committed with malice aforethought, characterized by deliberation or premeditation or occurring during the commission of another serious crime, as robbery or arson ... and murder by intent but without deliberation or premeditation..."

Excerpt from about.com

[http://atheism.about.com/od/tencommandments/a/commandment06.htm]

"The Sixth Commandment reads: Thou shalt not kill. (Exodus 20:13)

Many believers regard this as perhaps the most basic and easily accepted of all the commandments. After all, who would object to the government telling people not to kill? Unfortunately, this position relies upon a very superficial and uninformed understanding of what is going on. This commandment is, in fact, much more controversial and difficult that it appears at first.

To begin with, what does it mean to “kill”? Taken most literally, this would forbid killing animals for food or even plants for food. That seems implausible, however, because the Hebrew scriptures contain extensive descriptions about how to properly go about killing for food and that would be strange if killing were forbidden. More significantly is the fact that there are many examples in the Old Testament of God commanding the Hebrews to kill their enemies — why would God do that if this were a violation of one of the Commandments?

Thus, many translate the original Hebrew word ratsach as “murder” instead of “kill.” This may be reasonable, but the fact that popular lists of the Ten Commandments continue to use “kill” is a problem because if everyone agrees that “murder” is more accurate, then the popular lists — including those often used for government displays — are simply wrong and misleading. In fact, many Jews regard the mistranslation of the text as “kill” to be immoral in and of itself, both because it falsifies the words of God and because there are times when one has an obligation to kill."