"Murder" and "Kill" in the Sixth Commandment
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Date
2022-05
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The Ohio State University
Abstract
The sixth commandment has been translated into English as either, "You shall not murder," or, "You shall not kill," but the Hebrew word that has been translated as "murder" or "kill" is a relatively rare root throughout the Hebrew Bible in comparison with the many other Hebrew words for the taking of life. Other than the prohibitions (the sixth commandment) in Exodus 20:13 and Deuteronomy 5:17, every time that the root appears in the Hexateuch, it is in the very specific context of the cities of refuge. Outside of the Hexateuch, the root occurs only three times in the Deuteronomistic History, and two of those times are directly related to each other. All other occurrences of the root are in a limited number of passages throughout the rest of the Hebrew Bible, and they provide little insight into the meaning of the root. While the meaning of the root still eludes us, it is important to recognize the problems of our present English translations of the sixth commandment. Given the limited scope of the root as well as its relative obscurity in other parts of the Bible, by systematically walk through every case in the Hebrew Bible where the root appears, I demonstrate that the Hebrew root in the sixth commandment should not be understood as either "murder" or "kill."
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sixth commandment, Ten Commandments, You shall not kill, You shall not murder, Cities of Refuge, Hebrew, Homicide in Biblical Law, Hebrew words for homicide