View source for Chapter Eight – The Sixth Commandment — “You Shall Not Kill”

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The SIXTH COMMANDMENT is recorded in Exodus 20:13: “YOU SHALL NOT KILL.” The Hebrew word for “kill” is ratsach, but “murder” is a more accurate translation. This term means a wilful, deliberate and malicious act, as opposed to an action resulting in accidental death. (God does not view accidental death between parties as murder – see Deuteronomy 19:1-13).

In a world cut off from God, many today have little regard for the sanctity of human life. God said, “He that smites a man, so that he die, shall be surely put to death” (Ex. 21:12).

In most Western societies today, committing murder could cost the murderer as little as five years in prison, with probation!

Since God is the Giver of life, He forbids man from taking it. This includes suicide and abortion. Mankind is made in the image and likeness of God and has been given a mind and potential destiny to be born into God’s Family. This is why we must respect human life with the sanctity that God intended.

Never-ending Wars

The horror of war has wracked the world for thousands of years. Its fruits are terror, destruction, economic upheaval, orphaned children, population displacement, widespread devastation of the land, atrocities, hunger, disease, untold suffering, misery, despair, injuries, death and even genocide. All of this yields greater hatred and revenge, endless retaliation and more war, because nothing is ever permanently resolved through military conflict.

Ever since Cain slew Abel (Gen. 4:1-26), human history has been a chronicle of killing and war. What began as family or tribal disagreements later developed into conflicts between nations. The conflict between Cain and Abel was motivated by jealousy and contempt, and so have been the agendas of nations throughout history.

Additionally, long-standing ethnic, tribal and religious differences, coupled with boundary disputes and outright aggression to seize the land or property of others, have always served to fuel the next war fought between the same peoples or nations.

War has affected all nations in every period of history. Many nations have made war their primary means of livelihood—not just a means of defence or protection. Those nations that chose not to actively pursue war had to at least expend much time, money and effort to protect themselves—sometimes having to “buy” peace by paying tribute to powers that could have dominated them.

In the mid-1960s, a Norwegian statistician programmed a computer to count all of the wars through the 6,000 years of mankind’s history. It concluded that 14,531 wars had been fought. But this was merely the number that were known and recorded. How many more were not? And consider that this was several decades ago. Countless more have been fought since then. Of course, this does not count the endless stream of individual terrorist acts, such as suicide bombings and other assaults, which occur in undeclared wars.

Incredible new weapons technology has forever altered the face of war. “Smart” bombs, which are laser-guided to bring precision and efficiency to the art of killing, have replaced many types of “dumb” bombs. Military scientists have now developed cluster bombs, called “daisy cutters” because they cut down large numbers of human beings, like a lawnmower cuts grass. Also, there are newer bombs called “bunker-busters” that can penetrate deep into the earth in pursuit of enemies hiding in caves before detonating and killing the inhabitants.

Various highly lethal kinds of attack aircraft now exist—helicopters, jets, bombers, gunships—that have brought conventional warfare to a pinnacle of destructive capability never before known. A 2,000 pound, precision, satellite-guided bomb has a “kill zone” of 1,300 yards radius (almost three quarters of a mile). It kills and maims indiscriminately. So this can sometimes involve “friendly fire” casualties, in which one’s own troops are hit.

Modern military thinkers and strategists are now forced to think and talk in terms of protection from, or delivery of, “weapons of mass destruction.” The killing capability of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and, now, radiological or “dirty bombs,” is almost indescribably horrible.

But this presents no problem because men have devised ways to justify whatever they do. The greatest of all social problems, war, is no exception! And man’s pattern of not asking God what He thinks is also no exception. When nations have already decided that it is in their best interest to go to war, all that remains is the task of spelling out the human rationale to justify what they have pre-determined to do. Enter the moralists, ethicists, philosophers, politicians and religionists.

But God thunders to all peoples of every nation, “You shall not kill”! (The serious reader will wish to read our booklet War, Killing and the Military.)