Kill Not Murder
A Subtle Yet Crucial Change
For a long time, most of history in fact, translators of the Bible translated Exodus 20:13 as “Thou shalt not kill”. This includes the famous King James Version, as well as Martin Luther’s translation (not that any of these translators endorsed pacifism). Most modern translations, particularly in English, have changed the translation from kill to murder. The King James Version, however, stills uses kill.
The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) used by my Lutheran denomination translates it murder. The New International Version (NIV), a very popular translation also uses murder. The English Standard Version (ESV) and the New American Standard Bible (NASB) use murder.
These are all Protestant translations. Interestingly the Catholic translations New American Bible and New Jerusalem Bible and other Catholic translations use kill.
This change seems minor, but it is of crucial importance. How this is interpreted has a major impact regarding the Bible’s stance on violence. “Kill” is a general prohibition regarding the taking of human life. “Murder” is a legalistic term that clearly implies that there are times when a life may justly be taken, especially war and capital punishment. So, which is it and why, after so long, did scholars make this change in the 20th century?
Which Is It?
So, which is the best interpretation? A wonderful book helps make sense of all this. “You Shall Not Kill” or “You Shall Not Murder”?”: The Assault on a Biblical Text by Biblical scholar Wilma Ann Bailey does an excellent job of making sense of this.
Bailey examines the Hebrew verb ratsach, which is used in Exodus 20:13. She points out that while modern translators often use “murder” to imply a narrow, illegal act, the original Hebrew context is much broader. Ratsach covers a wide spectrum of killing, including:
- Premeditated murder.
- Accidental manslaughter.
- The actions of a “blood avenger.”
Bailey contextualizes the commandment within the ancient Israelite community, where the primary goal was to prevent the breakdown of social order caused by “blood guilt.” In her view, the commandment was intended to stop the cycle of violence that destroys a community, regardless of whether that violence was deemed “legal” at the time.
The Old Testament is full of instances where God commands the Israelites to go to war or mandates the death penalty for certain sins. Therefore, translators feel a “theological discomfort” when the Commandment says “Do not kill” while other chapters demand it. Using “murder” solves this tension by creating a loophole: God forbids illegal killing but permits ordered killing.
It is an ongoing debate as Hebrew has multiple words for “killing,” which helps clarify why some scholars choose “murder”. It seems that Bailey has the better of the argument here as the Hebrew word ratsach is not so narrow as to mean just “murder” I will not go further into that, the book is very accessible if you want a deeper dive.
The main point is that there are two broad schools of thought here: the Contextualists who use murder. They argue that this avoids contradiction with biblical laws on war and capital punishment. Then there are the Literalists and Ethicists who focus on the idea that taking of any life is a grave matter and requires greater justification.
Bailey concludes that the preference for “murder” in modern Bibles reflects a societal desire to reconcile religious faith with the state’s use of violence. She advocates for a more comprehensive understanding of the commandment that pushes back against all forms of killing.
I would argue that the Contextualists would have a better argument if the bible stopped with the Old Testament. It would take too long to dive into why the violence in the Old Testament is not really a justification for violence today, so suffice it to say that it does on the surface look like a great deal of violence is justified by the Old Testament. This makes the use of murder more attractive, as it would allow for war and capital punishment.
Yet, the bible does not stop with the Hebrew Texts. It continues on to the New Testament of Jesus Christ. The single greatest difference between the Old and New Testaments is the person of Jesus of Nazareth. God is doing a radical new thing here in the person of a radical Jesus. Jesus is upending everything including the way we think about violence. We could hang our pacifism of the life of Jesus, and indeed that is the biggest part of this stance. Yet, we also interpret the Old Testament in light of our faith in the Resurrection. My former pastor taught that the bible does not reveal the Resurrection, the Resurrection makes Scripture understandable. We then look back and see that the Old Testament either reveals Jesus, has been superseded by the New Testament or that it is a stand-alone text (such as the histories in the Books of the Kings).
Viewed in this way the better interpretation is to look expansively at the Hebrew word ratsach as being a generalized prohibition against killing, not just a legalistic term like murder. By translating it as “murder” we lose the moral weight of the original text, which expressed a more general disgust about the taking of any human life.
Why the Change?
Bailey in her book surmises that this change came about to make the Bible more comfortable for a society that engages in war and capital punishment. She views the “murder” translation as a way to strip the text of its radical challenge to violence, turning a broad moral principle into a narrow legal definition.
I am not going to get all conspiratorial here and say that scholars have been coopted. However, it is a suspicious amount of correlation between the rise in the use of “murder” instead of “kill” just as the state was becoming ever more violent. I recognize that there are scholars who simply disagree in good faith. Yet, they may in good faith be terribly wrong. There has long been way too much acquiescence between the church and the state that goes all the way back to…let’s say…Constantine in 313AD. This seems all too much a part of that long coziness between church and state that has so twisted so many of the faithful into spasms of really awful theology. This is a part of the bifurcation between “Christians” and followers of Jesus.
Takeaway
It is incumbent of the actual followers of Jesus to stand opposed to this trend. Part of that is taking a reasonable look at the texts and looking at both the Old and New Testaments and seeking a comprehensive view of the interpretation of both. In doing this we can recognize that it is often difficult to parse the meaning of Scripture yet still come up with the most reasonable conclusion that God does not want us to kill, not simply avoid murder. The salient point here is that every piece of evidence we gather about what Jesus would call us to be and do is one more nail in the coffin of any justification for violence. The best argument for that is the life of His Son, Jesus the Christ. Does anyone really doubt which interpretation our Lord and Savior would put to Exodus 20:13?
Praise Be to God
