What is the meaning of thou shalt not kill?

Thou shalt not kill. (Ex 20:13 KJV)

Thou shalt not kill. (Ex 20:13 ASV)

Thou shalt not kill. (Ex 20:13 DBY)

Thomas Scott

Verse 13: The sixth commandment requires us to “love our neighbour as ourselves” in respect of his person and life.-Magistrates, as “God’s ministers in executing vengeance,” are in some cases commanded to put men to death; and in others, it may be allowable, because conducive to the public good. Witnesses or executioners may concur in such capital punishments. We may doubtless take away another’s life in defense of our own; for he who assaults another’s life, by that action forfeits his own, and there is no opportunity of referring the cause to the civil magistrate. Perhaps, in peculiar circumstances, the same may be allowable in defence of our property.-Some wars are necessary, and the blood shed in them is not imputed as murder to those who shed it; yet the guilt of it must rest somewhere, and few wars are so entered upon and conducted as to leave any of the contending parties free from blood-guiltiness.

-A man may be misfortune kill another; yet God condemns, as willful murder, many of those actions by which life is taken away, but which are called by our law manslaughter. Furious passions, excited by sudden provocation or drunkenness, is nowhere in scripture excepted from the general rule, “He who sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.” The duellist is a proud or revengeful murderer of the most atrocious kind, and in general, he is distinguished from all other criminals, by a habitual determination to commit the sin whenever he shall be tempted to it.

-All fighting for wagers, or prizes, or renown, violates this command; and the blood thus shed is murder. Whatever, by force or stratagem, deprives another of his life, is prohibited. All the slaughter omitted by oppressions, persecutions, or attempts to deprive of liberty, or confine in slavery, our unoffending fellow-creatures, on any pretence whatever, is willful cruel murder. What then shall we think of the accursed slave-trade, and how thankful should we be that it is at length abolished!-Even laws, needlessly sanguinary (as it is to be feared many are in this land), involve the persons concerted in their enormous guilt; and they who ought to punish the murderer, and yet suffer him to escape, will be numbered among the abettors of his crime at the tribunal of God.

This commandment likewise prohibits us to assault, maim, or wound others, or to assist those who do; to tempt men to crimes that destroy their constitutions or endanger their lives, either from the sword of justice or the resentment of the injured party; nay, to entice them, by the [prospect of a large reward, to such enterprises and labours as are known generally to shorten life. Many parents and wives are murdered by the gross misconduct of their children and husbands; and numbers will be found guilty of transgressing this commandment by covetousness, which prompts to it. Nay, that man will be condemned as the hater and murderer of his brother, who, seeing his life endangered by the way of food, raiment, or medicine, and having ability to relieve him, selfishly neglects to do it. (Note, 1Jo 3:15-17).

-But the murder of the soul is still more heinous. This is committed by seducing men to sin; by a bad example; by disseminating poisonous principles; by terrifying others from a religion by persecution, or by reviling or ridiculing such as attend to it; by withholding instructions, needful warning, and counsels, especially such as are due from parents to their children, or ministers to their people: and it is tremendous to think what numbers will be thus condemned as the murderers of the souls of men.-the heinousness of suicide likewise should be especially marked. It is in reality the most malignant of all murders, and, as scarcely ever repented of, it combines the guilt of murdering both soul and body at once.

We were not the authors, and are not the lords, of our own lives; nor may we leave our assigned post, or rush without a summons into the presence of our Judge, any more than we may execute vengeance on our neighbour, or send him to the tribunal of God. Self-murder may be easily shown to be a complication of ingratitude, contempt of the Lord’s gift of life, defiance, impatience, pride, rebellion, and infidelity; nor is it generally the effect of insanity (as verdicts, in which perjury is deliberately committed from false tenderness, would lead us to suppose), except as all are in some sense insane, who are hurried on by fierce passions and satan’s temptations.

That original murderer knows this present life to be the only season in which salvation can be obtained, and therefore he tempts men to such excesses as destroy the constitution, or as render life miserable; and he urges them on to suicide, that he may destroy both body and soul by their hands, not being permitted to do it by his own power. Extravagance, discontent, and despondency, should therefore be most carefully shunned; and gratitude, patience, and hope most diligently cultivated. In a word, this command requires enlarged benevolence, kindness, long-suffering, and forgiveness, and a disposition to seek, in all respects, the welfare of every human being.