Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Exodus 20:13
Thou shalt not kill.
13. The sixth commandment. The sanctity of human life to be upheld (cf. Gen 9:5-6 P). Here the duty is laid down simply as a Divine command: the human penalty for infringing it is prescribed elsewhere (see on Exo 21:12).
shalt do no murder ] AV. had shalt not kill: but the Heb. word implies violent, unauthorised killing. Cf. especially the list of crimes in Hos 4:2 (where ‘killing’ has been kept), Jer 7:9. The verb in the ptcp. occurs repeatedly in P’s law of homicide in Numbers 35 (RV. always here ‘manslayer’).
Comp. the spiritualization of this commandment by our Lord in Mat 5:21-26.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Exo 20:13
Thou shalt not kill.
The Sixth Commandment
I. That this Commandment was intended, as some suppose, to forbid the infliction of capital punishment, is inconceivable. The Mosaic law itself inflicted death for murder, Sabbath-breaking, and the selling of a Jew into slavery. The root of the Commandment lies in the greatness of human nature; man is invested with a supernatural and Divine glory; to maintain the greatness of man it may be sometimes necessary that the murderer, who in his malice forgets the mystery and wonderfulness of his intended victim, should be put to death.
II. Does the Commandment absolutely forbid war between nations? Certainly not. The nation to which it was given had a strict military organization, organized by the very authority from which the Commandment came. Moses himself prayed to God that the hosts of Israel might be victorious over their enemies. Wars of ambition, wars of revenge–these are crimes. But the moral sense of the purest and noblest of mankind has sanctioned and honoured the courage and heroism which repel by force of arms an assault on a nations integrity, and the great principle which underlies this Commandment sanctions and honours them too. (R. W. Dale, D. D.)
The Sixth and Seventh Commandments
There are very sad and fearful thoughts connected with these Commandments. But there are also very blessed thoughts connected with them.
I. Is it nothing to remember that the Lord God Himself watches over the life of every one of us, poor creatures as we are, that He has declared, and does declare, how precious it is in His eyes? Our life is subject to a thousand accidents. All things seem to conspire against it. Death seems to get the mastery over it at last. But no; He has said, Death, I will be thy plague. As every plant and tree seems to die in winter and revive in spring, so He says to this more wonderful life in our bodies, It shall go on, and this is the pledge and witness that it shall: the Head of you all, the Son of man, the only-begotten Son of God, died Himself and rose again. Gods conflict with death is accomplished. The grave shall not kill.
II. And so, again, the Lord is the God over the household. He who says, Thou shalt not kill, bids us understand that it is well to pour out blood as if it were water rather than to become base and foul creatures, beasts instead of His servants and children. That was the reason He sent the Israelites to drive out the Canaanites. They were corrupting and defiling the earth with their abominations. It was time that the earth should be cleared of them. The God who gave these Commandments is King now, and there is no respect of persons with Him.
III. Christ died to take away the sins of men. He died to unite men to the righteous and sinless God. The Lord our God, who has redeemed us out of the house of bondage, will always deliver us from sin, will give us a new, right, and clean heart. (F. D. Maurice, M. A.)
The Sixth Commandment
I. The sin forbidden. In this, thou shalt not kill, is meant the not injuring another.
1. We must not injure another in his name. We injure others in their name when we calumniate and slander them. No physician can heal the wounds of the tongue.
2. We must not injure another in his body. The life is the most precious thing; and God hath set this Commandment as a fence about it, to preserve it. All these sins which lead to murder are here forbidden: As
(1) Unadvised anger. Anger boils up the blood in the veins, and oft produceth murder; in their anger they slew a man.
(2) Envy. Anger is sometimes soon over, like fire kindled in straw, which is quickly out; but envy is a radicated thing, and will not quench its thirst without blood; who is able to stand before envy?
(3) Hatred. How many ways is murder committed?
We may be said to murder another:
1. With the hand: as Joab killed Abner and Amasa; he smote him in the fifth rib, and shed out his bowels.
2. Murder is committed with the mind. Malice is mental murder; whoso hateth his brother is a murderer.
3. Murder is committed with the tongue, by speaking to the prejudice of another, and causing him to be put to death.
4. Murder is committed with the pen. Uriah.
5. By consenting to anothers death. Saul.
6. By not hindering the death of another when in our power. Pilate.
7. By unmercifulness.
8. By taking away that which is necessary for the sustentation of life.
9. By not helping him when he is ready to perish. We must not injure anothers soul. Who do this?
(1) Such as corrupt others by bad example.
(2) Such as entice others to sin.
(3) Ministers are murderers, who starve, poison, or infect souls.
(4) Such as destroy others, by getting them into bad company, and so making them proselytes to the devil.
The second thing forbidden in it is, the injuring one-self; thou shalt not kill: thou shalt do no hurt to thyself.
1. Thou shalt not hurt thy own body. One may be guilty of self-murder, either
(1) Indirectly and occasionally; as, first, when a man thrusts himself into danger which he might prevent. Secondly, a person may be in some sense guilty of his own death, by neglecting the use of means. If sick, and use no physic, if he hath received a wound and will not apply balsam, he hastens his own death. Thirdly, by immoderate grief: the sorrow of the world worketh death; when God takes away a dear relation, and one is swallowed up with sorrow. How many weep themselves into their graves! Queen Mary grieved so excessively for the loss of Calais, that it broke her heart. Fourthly, by intemperance, excess in diet. Surfeiting shortens life; more die of it than by the sword; many dig their grave with their teeth; too much oil chokes the lamp; the cup kills more than the cannon.
(2) One may be guilty of self- murder, directly and absolutely. First, by envy. Envy corrodes the heart, dries up the blood, rots the bones; envy is the rottenness of the bones. It is to the body, as the moth to the cloth, it eats it, and makes its beauty consume; envy drinks its own venom. Second, by laying violent hands on himself, and thus he is felo de se; as Saul fell upon his own sword and killed himself. A mans self is most near to him, therefore this sin of self-murder breaks both the law of God, and the bonds of nature. Self-murderers are worse than the brute-creatures; they will tear and gore one another, but no beast will go to destroy itself. Self-murder is occasioned usually from discontent; discontent is joined with a sullen melancholy. The bird that beats herself in the cage, and is ready to kill herself, is the true emblem of a discontented spirit.
2. Here is forbidden hurting ones own soul.
Who are they that go about desperately to murder their own souls?
1. Such wilfully go about to murder their souls, who have no sense of God, or the other world; they are past feeling.
2. Such as are set wilfully to murder their own souls, are they who are resolved upon their lusts, let what will come of it. Men will, for a drop of pleasure, drink a sea of wrath.
3. They murder their souls, who avoid all means of saving their souls.
4. They do voluntarily murder their souls, who suck in false prejudices against religion; as if religion were so strict and severe, that they who espouse holiness, must live a melancholy life, like hermits and anchorites, and drown all their joy in tears. This is a slander which the devil hath cast upon religion: for there is no true joy but in believing.
5. They are wilfully set to murder their own souls, who will neither be good themselves, nor suffer others to be so.
II. The duty implied. That we should do all the good we can to ourselves and others.
1. In reference to others.
(1) To preserve the life of others. Comfort them in their sorrows, relieve them in their wants, be as the good Samaritan, pour wine and oil into their wounds. Grace makes the heart tender, it causeth sympathy and charity; as it melts the heart, in contrition towards God, so in compassion towards others.
(2) Love. Love loves mercy: it is a noble bountiful grace. Love, like a full vessel, will have vent; it vents itself in acts of liberality. To communicate to the necessities of others, is not arbitrary, it is not left to our choice whether we will or no, but it is a duty incumbent; charge them that are rich in this world that they do good, that they be rich in good works. God supplies our wants, and shall not we supply the wants of others? Shall we be only as a sponge to suck in mercy, and not as breasts to milk it out to others?
(3) It is implied, that we should endeavour to preserve the souls of others; counsel them about their souls, set life and death before them, help them to heaven.
2. In reference to ourselves.
The Commandment, thou shalt not kill, requires that we should preserve our own life and soul.
1. It is engraven upon every creature, that we should preserve our own natural life.
2. This Commandment requires, that we should endeavour, as to preserve our own life, so especially, to preserve our own souls. (T. Watson.)
The Sixth Commandment
This command forbids the illegal and unrighteous taking of life. What a terrible commentary upon the condition of man that there needs to be such a command as this, Thou shalt not kill! Sin is its only explanation. Consider–
I. The murderer.
1. This crime comes as the sequence to a life of terrible guilt.
2. It subjects him to the extreme penalty of the law, and holds him up as a monster unfit for human fellowship and life.
3. It does violence to the highest interests of his soul.
II. The murdered man.
1. Murder cuts him off in the midst of his days.
2. It destroys all his earthly interests, and does him the greatest injustice. No time given to set business in order or provide for household.
3. It endangers his eternal welfare.
III. Society.
1. Murder outrages the rights of life and property.
(1) It brings disgrace to the relations of the murderer.
(2) It injures the connections of the murdered one.
(3) It disturbs the peace of society, and even threatens the stability of good government.
2. Hence to defend life becomes a duty (Psa 82:3-4; Job 29:13).
(1) We are not at liberty to take our own life (Act 16:28).
(2) When a man is attacked be should defend himself; or, if others need help, he should assist them (Pro 24:11-12).
(3) The welfare of society demands that the life of the murderer should be exacted by the government, or that he should be kept in perpetual durance (Gen 9:6).
IV. Applications.
1. We should keep the heart free from hatred and the like.
2. We should cultivate a sweet disposition and control over temper and passion. The passionate man may commit murder in the frenzy of his excitement.
3. We should avoid everything that tends toward this crime, such as quarrels, differences, strong drink, and all other things whose tendency is to evolve passion and destroy self.control. (L. O. Thompson.)
The Sixth Commandment
Man alone has the inspiration of Deity. This Divine inbreathing is the august peculiarity which separates man discretively and everlastingly from the animal creation. On his body side he sprang from dust; on his soul side he sprang with the animals; on his spirit side he sprang from God. Thus in his very beginning, in the original make-up of him, man was a religious being. Coming into existence as Jehovahs inbreathing, man was, in the very fact of being Divinely inbreathed, Gods Son and Image. Hence it is that the human body is such a sacred thing. It is the shrine of Gods Son, Gods image, Gods likeness, Gods spirit, Gods breath. As such it is the priceless casket of unknown sacred potentialities. Hence, murder is, in the intensest sense of the word, sacrilege: not only a crime against man, but a crime against God, in whose image man is made. But murder may be of varying degrees of atrocity. Accordingly, let us now glance at some of the various forms of murder.
1. And, first, there is the murder which is born of malice, or murder in the common acceptation of the term. Murder of this kind, whether perpetrated swiftly, as by the bullet, or slowly, as by arsenic, is the most fiendish of crimes. And nature, in an especial manner, ever waits to avenge it. Nor is this strange; for, as we have seen, man, on his body side, is linked with the material creation. The same elements which compose our physical organism compose, although in different proportions, the water we drink, the food we eat, the air we breathe, the dust we await. Hence nature herself often becomes a principal factor in the detection of the murderer. She ever stands ready to be murders avenger, supplying the prosecuting attorney with her re-agents, even with blood-corpuscles themselves.
2. Again, there is the murder which is born of sudden passion: the murder, for example, of lynch-law, when a mob usurps the functions of a court of justice; the murder of sudden vengeance, as when an outraged husband encounters and slays the destroyer of his home; the murder of manslaughter, whether voluntary or involuntary, whether provoked by insult, by menace, or by alcohol.
3. Again, there is the murder which is born of despair. Suicide, when committed by a sane person, is murder. Indeed, how often the two crimes are committed by the same person–the murderer first slaying his victim, then slaying himself. Justly does the law pronounce a suicide a felo de se–that is, one who makes a felon of himself, suicide being felonious self-murder.
4. Again, there is the murder which is born of shame: I mean infanticide.
5. Again, there if the murder which is born of harmful occupations. First in this list I would put the dram shop; it matters not that the killing is slow; the killing is moral murder; and before every saloon I would post a placard.bearing the Sinaitic legend: Thou shalt not kill. Again, there is the sale, when not prescribed by the physician, of narcotic drugs, in their various forms, from opium joints to chloral drops. Again, there are the slow murders which are perpetrated in houses of nameless sin–murders which are particularly sacrilegious, because, as we have seen, the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit.
6. Again, there is the murder which is born of thoughtlessness (see Deu 22:8). It is one of the cheering signs of the times that the public is awakening to the sense of its grave responsibility in this direction, for example, demanding that life shall not be imperiled by the failure to provide substantial structures, fire-escapes, life-preservers, railway precautions, sanitary arrangements of fresh air and wholesome food and pure water and clean streets, isolated refuges for sufferers from contagious and infectious diseases, competent physicians and druggists and nurses, sufficient hours for rest on the part of operatives, excursions for children, sanitariums for the poor, parks and recreation grounds–in brief, hygienic regulations in general.
7. And now let us ponder Christs interpretation of the law against murder (Mat 5:21-22). According to Him, murder is not a matter of outward act, but of inward feeling: not a question of standing before the community, but of character before the All-seeing. No murder was ever committed which did not begin in the heart. Who of us has kept the Sixth Commandment as the Divine Man has interpreted it? Who of us has not been angry, passionate, revengeful, petulant? Remembering, then, these quarrels of ours, these grudges and piques and faults of temper, who of us is not in danger of the eternal Gehenna? But we are not yet through with the Sixth Commandment. Although it is prohibitive in form, saying, Thou shalt not kill, yet it is affirmative in spirit, saying, Thou shalt love. (G. D. Boardman.)
The law of mercy
I. The essential principle of this Commandment.
1. In preferring the old Prayer Book reading, Thou shalt do no murder, the revisers have done well. Killing may be no murder. The right of self-defence belongs both to the individual and the community.
2. Human life is sacred, but not so sacred as the end for which it is given, viz., that man created in the image of God should do His will. That is the paramount obligation. The will of God may make it right for us to lay down our lives, or right to defend them at the cost of death to others.
II. The Mosaic enunciation of this Commandment.
1. It is inconceivable that the great law-giver can have read it in the sense of an absolute Thou shalt not kill.
(1) If he had condemned killing in self-defence, he could not have formed the regulation in Exo 22:2.
(2) If he had condemned killing by public justice, he would not have ordained capital punishment, as he did not only for murder, but also for kidnapping, insolence to parents, adultery, sorcery, blasphemy, and Sabbath-breaking.
(3) If he had condemned killing in war, he would neither have engaged in it himself nor have left it as a solemn legacy to his successor.
(4) Against actual murder the law of Moses was uncompromising (see Deu 19:11-13; Exo 21:14.)
2. In this stern impartiality the Hebrew legislator rose head and shoulders, not only above his contemporaries, but above generations very far subsequent to him. Even in Christian England, and in our own day, we tolerate in connection with many offences, an alternative of fine or imprisonment?; a bad remainder of feudal times, which lets the rich man lightly off, but crushes his poorer neighbour–an inequality with which Moses could not be charged. But he went further than this. He laid down the principle that criminal carelessness and selfish indifference to human life ought to be regarded as tantamount to murder (see Exo 21:28-29). If our own British laws were as clear as this in their denunciation of criminal carelessness and wicked recklessness of human life, it would be vastly to the public advantage. What of the jerry-builders heaping rotting garbage into the foundations of houses, putting cheap arsenicated papers on the walls, and scamping drains that they may net exorbitant rents at the price of human lives? What of smug railway-directors sweeping in golden dividends, but leaving poor signalmen to toil for such long hours that exhausted nature muddles the points, and horrible collisions follow? What of the chemist who adulterates his drugs, the inn-keeper who puts damp sheets on the travellers bed, and the butcher who sends diseased meat into market? The plain truth is, that these people are murderers. We are yet as to legislation a long way behind the brave old ruler who said out forcibly what such criminals should suffer; but our moral sense sees clearly that they inflict death upon innocent people, a death as sure as if they had put knife to the throats or revolver to the hearts of their victims, a death often slower and more cruel in its torture.
III. The Saviours comment upon this word (see Mat 5:21-22). Nothing condemned by Moses as a breach of the sixth word is excused by Jesus. Instead of loosing, He tightens the reins. He tracks the lurking murder in many an unsuspected heart. He marks three degrees of murderous guilt, all of which may be manifested without a blow being struck: secret anger; spiteful jeer; open, unrestrained outburst of violent, abusive speech.
IV. The positive interpretation of this Commandment will lift us to the true platform of Christian morality by transfiguring it into a law of mercy. The same essential principle which forbids murder ordains brotherhood. (W. J. Woods B. A.)
Injuring man prohibited
We now come to the commandments which refer exclusively to our duty to man. Of these there are five. The first four we group together. They each read: Thou shalt not injure thy fellow-man. We cannot injure God–we can only act irreverently and carelessly toward God, and so injure, not Him, but ourselves. Sin has made us natural enemies to one another–Ishmaelites, whose hands are against every man, and every mans hand against us. Mans condition by nature is not seen in mans condition in England, France, or civilized America, but in mans condition in the savage island of the Pacific, where the heavenly rays of the gospel have least penetrated. The civilizations of Christianity exhibit, not humanity, but Christianity. The civilizations of ancient Persia, Greece, and Rome (although a little revelation filtered through upon them) exhibit humanity, in its best estate, as a refined selfishness, where every man seeks (adroitly, perhaps, and not openly) to injure his neighbour. The injury which man can do to his fellowman can be divided into four kinds–injury to person, injury to society, injury to property, and injury to reputation. (H. Crosby, D. D.)
Personal application of the Commandment
The Commandment is addressed to each man, and applies to his own life and the life of his neighbour.
1. His own life he is forbidden to take. He is commanded to care for it. Man does not own himself, has no title in his own life as before God, has no right to destroy it, but should take good care of it, for it belongs to God. We are here forbidden to brood over our troubles. It is wrong to cultivate a melancholy spirit, or a rebellious one. We should strive against these natural tendencies which threaten life and dishonour God. God requires us further to have that high regard for our lives which shall lead us to guard and maintain them in the best possible condition. We are to become familiar with the laws of health, and obedient to them. The Commandment tells us how we shall dress. Adornment should be subordinate to comfort. Thin shoes and bare arms venture out to a late party on a winters night; a severe cold sometimes follows, and a speedy death. We say, What a mysterious providence to take one so young! Do we not know that the laws of providence are in favour of good health and long life, and that sickness and death often come directly from our disobedience of these laws. This Commandment directs us in the conduct of our business. In gaining our living we are not needlessly to risk our lives. We are to be masters of our business, not mastered by it.
2. God requires further that each one shall hold the life of others sacred as well as his own. He is forbidden to take it. He is commanded to care for it. The contentious spirit is to be checked in its small beginnings, for its natural tendency is to hard feelings and deadly hatred. Our pride is not to be cultivated, for an over-estimate of our own importance is sure to be cut to the quick by the slights of others, and arousing into anger will cherish the desire for revenge. High temper quickly flies into anger when provoked, and often acts and speaks in the heat of passion, adding fuel to its own flame and striking fire into other hearts. It is said that Julius Caesar won many victories over his own spirit by the simple rule never to speak or act when provoked until he had repeated slowly the Roman alphabet. We are to beware of having any prejudice against our neighbour. We are to think of him kindly, and speak of him and to him kindly, no matter what he thinks of us, or how he speaks of us or to us, or even if he will not speak to us at all. All private grudges and neighbourhood feuds, if they stand at all, must stand under the frowning face of this Commandment. Neither can cool indifference to our neighbours welfare find any place in our hearts under this law of God. In the social arrangements of the day lives are often placed in the charge of others. Those having this charge should pay special attention to this Commandment. The owner of a tenement house, if he regards this Commandment at all, will seek the health, comfort, and welfare of his tenants. Builders of roads, bridges, and houses, if they regard this Commandment at all, will seek not only good wages, but mainly to do good work, that mens lives may be safe. This Commandment directs us to be good citizens and to seek the health and welfare of all the members of the community where we dwell. The sanitary arrangements of city, town, and village, are commended to our attention. We may not neglect them without guilt. The sacredness of life enjoined in the Commandment covers not merely the bodily life, it lies specially in our spiritual life, in the image of God. Is life worth living? asks the worldly philosopher, as if there was some doubt about it. Worth living? Surely it is, since our spiritual life though fallen may be brought into a shape worthy of God our Father. Herein we see the highest realm of this Commandment, the true sacredness of life. We are carefully to avoid in ourselves and in our influence all those things which would have any tendency to destroy the soul. (F. S. Schenck.)
Anger leading to murder
I remember when I was a boy at school a case of this kind occurred. One of the scholars, whose name was James, had a terrible temper. The least thing that displeased him would throw him into a rage, and then he would act in the most violent manner. He never seemed to feel how dreadfully wicked it was, or to be afraid of the consequences that might follow from it. One day, during recess, he stretched himself on a bench to take a nap. One of the boys thought be would have a little fun with James. He look a feather, and leaned over the bench, and began to tickle him in the ear. James shook his head, and cried Quit that. Presently he felt the feather again. You quit that, I say! he exclaimed, very angrily. The boy very thoughtlessly went on with his mischief. Then James sprang from the bench, seized a pair of compasses lying on the desk near him, and threw them at the boy with all his might. They struck him on the side of the head. They entered his brain. He fell down, never spoke again, and was carried home a corpse. How dreadful this was! Here was the young serpent that had been allowed to nestle in this boys heart springing up suddenly to its full growth, and making a murderer of him. Oh, watch against these young serpents! (R. Newton, D. D.)
Refusing to fight a duel
Colonel Gardiner, having received a challenge to fight a duel, made the following truly noble and Christian reply: I fear sinning, though you know, sir, I do not fear fighting; thus showing his conviction of a fact too often forgotten, that the most impressive manifestation of courage is to obey God rather than man.
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT
Against murder and cruelty.
Verse 13. Thou shalt not kill.] This commandment, which is general, prohibits murder of every kind.
1. All actions by which the lives of our fellow creatures may be abridged.
2. All wars for extending empire, commerce, c.
3. All sanguinary laws, by the operation of which the lives of men may be taken away for offences of comparatively trifling demerit.
4. All bad dispositions which lead men to wish evil to, or meditate mischief against, one another for, says the Scripture, He that hateth his brother in his heart is a murderer.
5. All want of charity to the helpless and distressed; for he who has it in his power to save the life of another by a timely application of succour, food, raiment, c., and does not do it, and the life of the person either falls or is abridged on this account, is in the sight of God a murderer. He who neglects to save life is, according to an incontrovertible maxim in law, the SAME as he who takes it away.
6. All riot and excess, all drunkenness and gluttony, all inactivity and slothfulness, and all superstitious mortifications and self-denials, by which life may be destroyed or shortened all these are point-blank sins against the sixth commandment.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
To wit any man or woman, without authority, and without just cause; which exception must necessarily be understood, because many other scriptures command the magistrate to kill great offenders. And this prohibition being delivered by God, who made, and searcheth, and commands mens hearts, must be extended not only to the external act of killing, but to all motions of the heart or tongue which tend that way, as anger, hatred, envy, malice, strife, blows, and the challenges of duelists; which is clearly manifest by comparing this with other scriptures, as Mat 5:21; 1Jo 3:15, &c. And here, as in the rest, is commanded the contrary duty of preserving tie lives of our neighbours as much as lies in our power.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
Thou shalt not kill. Not meaning any sort of creatures, for there are some to be killed for the food and nourishment of men, and others for their safety and preservation; but rational creatures, men, women, and children, any of the human species, of every age, sex, condition, or nation; no man has a right to take away his own life, or the life of another; by this law is forbidden suicide, or self-murder, parricide or murder of parents, homicide or the murder of man; yet killing of men in lawful war, or in defence of a man’s self, when his own life is in danger, or the execution of malefactors by the hands or order of the civil magistrate, and killing a man at unawares, without any design, are not to be reckoned breaches of this law; but taking away the life of another through private malice and revenge, and even stabbing of a man’s character, and so all things tending to or designed for the taking away of life, and all plots, conspiracies, and contrivances for that purpose, even all sinful anger, undue wrath and envy, rancour of all mind, all malice in thought, word, or deed, are contrary to this precept, see Mt 5:21 and which, on the other hand, requires that men should do all they can for the ease, peace, and preservation of the lives of men: this is the sixth command, but, in the Septuagint, the strict order in which this and the two following precepts lie is not observed, rehearsing them thus, “thou shall not commit adultery, thou shall not steal, thou shall not kill”; and so in
Mr 10:19 the order is inverted.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
The other Five Words or commandments, which determine the duties to one’s neighbour, are summed up in Lev 19:18 in the one word, “Love thy neighbour as thyself.” The order in which they follow one another is the following: they first of all secure life, marriage, and property against active invasion or attack, and then, proceeding from deed to word and thought, they forbid false witness and coveting.
(Note: Luther has pointed out this mirum et aptum ordinem, and expounds it thus: Incipit prohibitio a majori usque ad minimum, nam maximum damnum est occisio hominis, deinde proximum violatio conjugis, tertium ablatio facultatis. Quod qui in iis nocere non possunt, saltem lingua nocent, ideo quartum est laesio famae. Quodsi in iis non praevalent omnibus, saltem corde laedunt proximum, cupiendo quae ejus sunt, in quo et invidia proprie consistit .)
If, therefore, the first three commandments in this table refer primarily to deeds; the subsequent advance to the prohibition of desire is a proof that the deed is not to be separated from the disposition, and that “the fulfilment of the law is only complete when the heart itself is sanctified” ( Oehler). Accordingly, in the command, “Thou shalt not kill,” not only is the accomplished fact of murder condemned, whether it proceed from open violence or stratagem (Exo 21:12, Exo 21:14, Exo 21:18), but every act that endangers human life, whether it arise from carelessness (Deu 22:8) or wantonness (Lev 19:14), or from hatred, anger, and revenge (Lev 19:17-18). Life is placed at the head of these commandments, not as being the highest earthly possession, but because it is the basis of human existence, and in the life the personality is attacked, and in that the image of God (Gen 9:6). The omission of the object still remains to be noticed, as showing that the prohibition includes not only the killing of a fellow-man, but the destruction of one’s own life, or suicide. – The two following commandments are couched in equally general terms. Adultery, , which is used in Lev 20:10 of both man and woman, signifies (as distinguished from to commit fornication) the sexual intercourse of a husband with the wife of another, or of a wife with the husband of another. This prohibition is not only directed against any assault upon the husband’s dearest possession, for the tenth commandment guards against that, but upholds the sacredness of marriage as the divine appointment for the propagation and multiplication of the human race; and although addressed primarily to the man, like all the commandments that were given to the whole nation, applies quite as much to the woman as to the man, just as we find in Lev 20:10 that adultery was to be punished with death in the case of both the man and the woman. – Property was to be equally inviolable. The command, “Thou shalt not steal,” prohibited not only the secret or open removal of another person’s property, but injury done to it, or fraudulent retention of it, through carelessness or indifference (Exo 21:33; Exo 22:13; Exo 23:4-5; Deu 22:1-4). – But lest these commandments should be understood as relating merely to the outward act as such, as they were by the Pharisees, in opposition to whom Christ set forth their true fulfilment (Mat 5:21.), God added the further prohibition, “ Thou shalt not answer as a false witness against thy neighbour, ” i.e., give false testimony against him. and : to answer or give evidence against a person (Gen 30:33). is not evidence, but a witness. Instead of , a witness of a lie, who consciously gives utterance to falsehood, we find in Deuteronomy, one who says what is vain, worthless, unfounded ( , Exo 23:1; on see Exo 23:7). From this it is evident, that not only is lying prohibited, but false and unfounded evidence in general; and not only evidence before a judge, but false evidence of every kind, by which (according to the context) the life, married relation, or property of a neighbour might be endangered (cf. Exo 23:1; Num 35:30; Deu 17:6; Deu 19:15; Deu 22:13.). – The last or tenth commandment is directed against desiring (coveting), as the root from which every sin against a neighbour springs, whether it be in word or deed. The , (lxx), coveting, proceeds from the heart (Pro 6:25), and brings forth sin, which “is finished” in the act (Jam 1:14-15). The repetition of the words, “Thou shalt not covet,” does not prove that there are two different commandments, any more than the substitution of in Deu 5:18 for the second . and are synonyms, – the only difference between them being, that “the former denotes the desire as founded upon the perception of beauty, and therefore excited from without, the latter, desire originating at the very outset in the person himself, and arising from his own want or inclination” ( Schultz). The repetition merely serves to strengthen and give the great emphasis to that which constitutes the very kernel of the command, and is just as much in harmony with the simple and appropriate language of the law, as the employment of a synonym in the place of the repetition of the same word is with the rhetorical character of Deuteronomy. Moreover, the objects of desire do not point to two different commandments. This is evident at once from the transposition of the house and wife in Deuteronomy. (the house) is not merely the dwelling, but the entire household (as in Gen 15:2; Job 8:15), either including the wife, or exclusive of her. In the text before us she is included; in Deuteronomy she is not, but is placed first as the crown of the man, and a possession more costly than pearls (Pro 12:4; Pro 31:10). In this case, the idea of the “house” is restricted to the other property belonging to the domestic economy, which is classified in Deuteronomy as fields, servants, cattle, and whatever else a man may have; whereas in Exodus the “house” is divided into wife, servants, cattle, and the rest of the possessions.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
The sum of this Commandment is, that we should not unjustly do violence to any one. In order, however, that God may the better restrain us from all injury of others, He propounds one particular form of it, from which men’s natural sense is abhorrent; for we all detest murder, so as to recoil from those whose hands are polluted with blood, as if they carried contagion with them. Undoubtedly God would have the remains of His image, which still shine forth in men, to continue in some estimation, so that all might feel that every homicide is an offense against Him, ( sacrilegium.) He does not, indeed, here express the reason, whereby He elsewhere deters men from murder, i e. , by asserting that thus His image is violated, (Gen 9:6😉 yet, however precisely and authoritatively He may speak as a Legislator, He would still have us consider, what might naturally occur to everybody’s mind, such as the statement of Isa 58:7, that man is our “own flesh.” In order, then, that believers may more diligently beware of inflicting injuries, He condemns a crime, which all spontaneously confess to be insufferable. It will, however, more clearly appear hereafter, that under the word kill is included by synecdoche all violence, smiting, and aggression. Besides, another principle is also to be remembered, that in negative precepts, as they are called, the opposite affirmation is also to be understood; else it would not be by any means consistent, that a person would satisfy God’s Law by merely abstaining from doing injury to others. Suppose, for example, that one of a cowardly disposition, and not daring to assail even a child, should not move a finger to injure his neighbors, would he therefore have discharged the duties of humanity as regards the Sixth Commandment? Nay, natural common sense demands more than that we should abstain from wrongdoing. And, not to say more on this point, it will plainly appear from the summary of the Second Table, that God not only forbids us to be murderers, but also prescribes that every one should study faithfully to defend the life of his neighbor, and practically to declare that it is dear to him; for in that summary no mere negative phrase is used, but the words expressly set forth that our neighbors are to be loved. It is unquestionable, then, that of those whom God there commands to be loved, He here commends the lives to our care. There are, consequently, two parts in the Commandment, — first, that we should not vex, or oppress, or be at enmity with any; and, secondly, that we should not only live at peace with men, without exciting quarrels, but also should aid, as far as we can, the miserable who are unjustly oppressed, and should endeavor to resist the wicked, lest they should injure men as they list. Christ, therefore, in expounding the genuine sense of the Law, not only pronounces those transgressors who have committed murder, but also that
“
he shall be in danger of the judgment who is angry with his brother without a cause; and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council; but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell-fire.” (Mat 5:22.)
For He does not there, as some have ignorantly supposed, frame t~ new law, as if to east blame upon His Father; but shows the folly and perversity of those interpreters of the Law who only insist on the external appearance, and husk of things, as is vulgarly said; since the doctrine of God must rather be estimated from a due consideration of. His nature. Before earthly judges, if a man have carried a weapon for the purpose of killing a man, he is found guilty of violence; and God, who is a spiritual Lawgiver, goes even further. With Him, therefore, anger is accounted murder; yea, inasmuch as He pierces even to the most secret feelings, He holds even concealed hatred to be murder; for so we must understand John’s words, “Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer,” (1Jo 3:15😉 i.e., hatred conceived in the heart is sufficient for his condemnation, although it may not openly appear.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT VERSUS MURDER
Exo 20:13
THEN Christ said, He that offendeth in one point offendeth in all, He affirmed a great fact concerning the consistency of the Ten Commandments. It is practically impossible to violate one of them, and yet, to keep the other nine, for they are a chain, and the strength and value of a chain depends upon the integrity of each link. For instance, the first commandment, Thou shalt have no other gods before Me, cannot be kept apart from the second, namely,
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God.
It is quite impossible also to keep the first or second commandment while violating the third, since the man Who takes the Name of the Lord in vain is not worshiping Him at all, but profaning Him instead. The fourth commandment, Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, is a proof of ones allegiance to the Lord, his recognition of Gods sovereign right in time, and of His proper reservation of the seventh day for worship.
But the fifth commandment is also closely related to all that goes before, as well as all that follows after the Sinaitic arch, so to speak, since no man who truly worships God and Him only, who reverently employs His Name, and righteously regards the holiness of the Sabbath, could or would refrain from honoring his father and mother. And to say that a man who violated the sixth commandment would be proving his contempt for the five that preceded it, is to speak a truism.
The sixth commandmentThou shalt not kill, deals with the divinest of all subjects, namely, life. Christ Himself expressed that thought when He said, What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own life, or what shall a man give in exchange for his life?
Of all conceivable possessions, life holds the supreme place. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning (Jas 1:17), but of His gifts, life is the incomparable one. Nature itself can develop the live thing, but life itself is Gods direct gift, and it is also the highest expression of His creative power; hence, the sacredness of the same.
The shortest of the Ten Commandments is the supreme one of them all, as men uniformly admit. Society can and will forgive the man who is an atheist, or an idolater, or profane, or a Sabbath breaker or non-filial; it will even condone adultery, theft, false witness, and covetousness. But murder is everywhere regarded as the chief of all conceivable evils, and in all ages and countries, it has been so treated.
We believe that the proper interpretation of this text would involve The Murder of the Body, The Spirit of Murder, and The Murder of the Soul.
THE MURDER OF THE BODY
This is the murder commonly thought of when the word is employed. If one were to follow the dictionary, it would include at least three definitions of positive crimes: Homicide, infanticide or foeticide, and suicide.
The one uppermost in the mind when murder is mentioned is homicide.
And just at this present moment in America and, for that matter, in many portions of the world, this arch crime in human conduct is cursedly common. Banditry in heathen lands, robbers and hold-up men in America, have made murder a veritable, and in many instances, a financially profitable employment; so far, in fact, has this disregard of life eaten like gangrene into modern society that the question today before American people is that of capital punishment.
Many states which have at some time abolished capital punishment are now being compelled, by the course of history, to revive the same. There are those who try to make this commandment a proof text against capital punishment. On the contrary, it is basal in its defense. We will find in this selfsame Book Gods own prescription of death against certain and definite diabolical deeds, and among them murder is chief. In our youth, we engaged in a debate and were assigned the side of opposition to capital punishment. The preparation made with a view to victory, produced its prejudice, and for years we opposed the same, but wider observation and, still more certainly, a deeper search into Scripture sufficed to convince us to the contrary. We believe that in this, as in practically every other subject, the Scriptures speak the last word and that the science of anthropology will be more and more compelled to consent to the utter justice of death for the man who, with malice of forethought, or out of an utterly godless greed, despises and dares to take away human life.
The study of the physical, mental and moral sciences have sufficed to make us see that many a criminal is such by reason of circumstances over which he had no control. The physical constitution of a man often accounts for his moral and mental makeup. It is now known that a pressure on some nerve, particularly in the brain region, may render a man utterly abnormal and bring him to deeds that are a dire result of this physical infirmity. In view of that fact, the educated are more sympathetic with crime than since the world began, and medical science seeks more and more to determine the degree of responsibility for each moral derelict, and often discovers that he needs medical treatment rather than penal justice. But, while the upper classes in society have marked progress in humane sentiment through scientific knowledge, the lower and more brutal classes have worked up a morbid sentimentality in favor of every man who chooses a criminal career, and they are increasingly disposed to treat him as a hero. While I write, the morning paper reports that Whittemore, leader of one of the most desperate gang of robbers known to modern times, was set free by a Buffalo, New York, jury, which disagreed, and, in spite of the fact that he had been a murderer more than once, according to charges, the announcement of no verdict by the jury foreman, brought from the spectators a burst of cheers. In this particular instance, there was nothing brave about the crime, and nothing romantic in the person or course of the criminal. He offered, on condition of being let off, to make a confession that would implicate his pals, and probably send them to the noose. He stood ready to betray those that trusted him, if thereby he could save his own skin, and yet the ignorantly sentimental vociferously cheered his undeserved escape, and a Buffalo newspaper asked, Has murder become popular? The simple fact is that many a man can be found who, if he were only sure that his name would be in the newspapers daily for a month, and an admiring crowd would gather in the court room, to give audience to his trial, would well-nigh commit murder for the sake of the public attention it promised. One would search the Scriptures in vain for a confirmation of such sickly sentimentality, of a condoning of such basely inspired crimes. The Law of the Lord is, Whoso sheddeth mans blood, by man shall his blood be shed, and that Law is defined in this language,
If a man come presumptuously upon his neighbour, to slay him with guile; thou shalt take him from mine altar, that he may die. And he that smiteth his father, or his mother, shall be surely put to death (Exo 21:14-15).
But from homicide, we are compelled to pass to the consideration of another subject now looming large in the evil practices of the world.
We speak of foeticide and infanticide.
Modernism is not a matter of theology only. The terms expresses the customs of the day as well as of its crooked theological thinking. Among those custoths, foeticide and infanticide are increasingly common. Children are not always, now, regarded as blessings from the Lord. Quite as often, they are considered domestic nuisances and social inconveniences. Men and women alike have so far yielded themselves to the love of ease, and the passion for pleasure, that parenthood is often an unwelcome experience, and thousands and tens of thousands of children never survive the gestation period. Our boasted modern inventions compass not only the knowledge of steam and electricity and gasoline and radio, but also hundreds of agencies and employments of destruction that can be used both against the unborn and the new-born, and so used that the crime itself is covered and the criminals are nonsuspected.
It is said that Charles the Ninth, who murdered the Hugenots, afterwards lost his mind as he brooded over his own brutality, and that his deepest grief was in consequence of his slaughter of innocent babes. It is a strange fact, and yet fact it is, that many a woman living in the marriage relation, rather than endure the pains incident to giving birth, or experience the cares essential to successful child-culture, will destroy her own innocents, staining her hands with their blood. Whatever may be said by way of sympathy for the unfortunate girl whose misplaced confidence has brought her to choose between abortion and a life of personal shame, and a never-ending disgrace for her fatherless babe, certainly little sympathy could ever be felt for the married woman who murders her own, and only the judgment of God could naturally be expected against a deed that is a clear violation of the sixth commandment.
The evolutionary hypothesis has brought too many to feel that man is only an animal, and society needs to have thundered into its ears the sixth commandment, Thou shalt not kill! and the pulpit needs to so interpret this clear, concise law of God, that conceived children shall be privileged to come to the birth, and parents who beget the same shall accept the solemn responsibility, yea, even the high privilege of bringing them up to be citizens of the commonwealth; and, better yet, to be consistent patrons of the Christian faith.
But we take another step in the discussion of this commandment when we remind men and women that suicide is also murder. There is a philosophy abroad to the effect that a man has a right to do what he pleases with his own life, but it is a philosophy false alike to the source and sacred interests of life itself. Life, as we have already seen, is not a matter of mans option, and consequently, it is not to be disposed of at his pleasure. Life is a direct gift from God, and He alone has the right to take it away. The Prodigal Son, who demanded of the father a portion of goods that was to fall to him, was granted the same; but when he went away into a far country and squandered his substance with riotous living, he not only proved his own personal wickedness and folly, but he wronged the father whose gifts the goods were. The man who takes the more precious dowry of life itself and dissipates or destroys it, becomes thereby the chief of sinners, and for that dissipation or destruction, there is, as there should be, a day of judgment. It is bad enough to waste ones substance with riotous living. It is infinitely worse to throw away the highest wealth known to the worldGods greatest grant to man life.
Society ever shows its sympathy for the insane, and there is a growing disposition to admit that suicide is commonly the act of insanity. In such an instance, we may trust that He who knoweth all things and whose compassions are exceeding great, will judge the offence in mercy. But, that sin more often fruits in suicide than does insanity, and that self-destruction repeatedly results from that form of infidelity that doubts God and immortality, and derides the common judgment, no observing man can question. The Scriptures nowhere distinguish between the man who takes the life of another, and the man who takes his own life, in such a way as to condemn the former and excuse or even condone the conduct of the latter.
Some years ago, there was fished out of the Chicago river the body of a suicide. In his clothes was found a poem describing the various and multiplied steps leading from promising youth to this suicidal plunge. Every line of the poem illustrated the solemn and awful fact which history has repeated ten thousand times, that sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death and justifies the law of God written into the sixth commandment.
But we pass from the actual deed of destruction to discuss
THE SPIRIT OF MURDER
as also in violation of the sixth commandment. The certainty that such a spirit is brought under condemnation by this law, is discovered in the study of the Scriptures themselves. They condemn as murderous, indifference to life, unsuccessful attempt to take away the same, and anger that wishes evil.
Indifference to life! Deuteronomy means a second giving of the Law, and in that Book, indifference to life is under dire condemnation. It is written (Exo 22:8),
When thou buildest a new house, then thou shalt make a battlement for thy roof, that thou bring not blood upon thine house, if any man fall from thence.
The reference is plainly to the flat roof that has long characterized the orient, upon which men sleep, and, in the cool of the day, sit; from which, without battlements, they might fall and be maimed or killed. There was some expense in putting a battlement or guard around the roof, and men would be tempted to neglect the same in the selfish interest of saving, and Gods Law plainly warned them that such a failure to protect life invited judgment.
This Old Testament legislation is the sad need of the day. In America we kill thousands of people at grade crossings. In England, such an accident is almost unknown. The difference is in the single circumstance that Englands crossings are guarded and Americas are ignored. It may be a saving to corporation, but it justly brings them under the sentence of God against murder.
Many years since, the railroad running from Chicago a few hundred miles south was in difficult financial straits. At that time, the labor unions were not strong enough to make and enforce demands. I lived beside this railroad in the week in which nine engineers went to their deaths through accidents that resulted purely from being overworked. These men Were kept in the service for such long hours that nature failed. Sleep, natures kind restorer, sought to lend them assistance, and selfish greed sent them, through sleep at post, down to their death. The owners of that railroad needed to have thundered into their ears, Thou shalt not kill! Their indifference to life was a flagrant violation of the sixth commandment.
The unsuccessful attempt at murder!
It will be remembered that Saul attempted more than once to take away Davids life. His failure in no wise exculpated him from the murder charge. The laws of every civilized land take note of an attack with intent to kill and treat the attempt with that severity which the same demands. People have laughed more than once at the story brought from the old world to the effect that an American, passing into the crypt of some cathedral and being conducted about by an Irish verger, was shown a skull and told that it was the skull of St. Patrick. The man took it into his hands, felt himself honored to finger the same, and while he held and reflected upon the precious relic, the Irishman, absent for a few minutes, returned and proffered to the man, a second skull saying, Here, your honour, is the skull of St. Patrick when he was a boy. The absurdity of this over-zealous papist was not so great as is commonly supposed. The simple truth is that Saul did slay David in spirit more than once, and there are men who never shed a drop of blood, but who murder some of their fellows daily, and who murder the same men a multitude of times in spirit. Such are under condemnation by the sixth commandment.
The anger that wishes evil! That this is murder, the Bible puts past dispute in 1Jn 3:15, Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer; and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.
In the Old Testament Scriptures (Num 35:16-24), a clear distinction is made, and with justice, between the man who kills, actuated by the spirit of murder, and the man who destroys without intent. Murder, then, in its last analysis, is not so much an act as an intent. Let all men and women who hate their fellows face the fact that without a single injurious act, they may be in clear violation of the sixth commandment, and fare little or no better in the last day than they whose hands are gory with human blood.
There are those who live a life of hatred. They get positive pleasure out of the spirit of hatred. They look their hatred into the face of the enemy when they pass him on the streets. They feel that hatred every time they recall the hated one to mind. They wish him every conceivable hurt, but withholding their hands from what the heart prompts, they imagine they escape murder. In the eyes of human law, yes. It takes no account of intent or even desire. It treats the overt act only. Not so with God. He looketh not on the outward appearance. He looketh on the heart. He deals not with conduct, but with characternot with reputation, but with the deeper thing that constitutes the man. In the judgment of Jesus, who knew man and whose word is final concerning any subject and all subjects, as one may be an adulterer without an actual violation of the seventh commandment, the adultery of a look of lust, even so one may be a murderer without the taking of life, because he carries in his bosom a heart of hatred.
But, the final interpretation of the sixth commandment has to do with yet another subject.
THE MURDER OF THE SOUL
That such a thing is possible becomes clear upon the further study of the sacred word.
A man may be a deformer of his fellows. This murderous act is dealt with in Mat 18:6-7.
But whoso shall cause one of these little ones that believe on Me to stumble, (A. S. V.) it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!
If we rightly interpret this Scripture, it means that a man may take a child, and, by exercizing over him the evil influence of infidelity, cause him to stumble in matters of faith and become an ill-formed infidel himself. Such deforming of ones fellows Christ declared to invite a more dire judgment than even murder itself. Since death by a millstone about the neck was capital punishment, here is a crime demanding more dreadful judgment. Modernists may imagine that their philosophy of life and faith is an academic matter. But if this statement of Jesus is accepted, it becomes a moral, yea, a fateful question. We candidly believe that the greatest destroyer of man living today is the faith-destroyerthe man who spiritually mutilates his fellowthe professor who takes immature young men and women who believe in God and in the Bible, and at the end of four years dismisses them to a life of schooled infidelity.
It is said that when Pompeii was being exhumed, a slab was dug up that seemed to have a face upon the same, and thinking possibly it might be the likeness of some man of fame, the workman carefully picked away the dirt and cleansed the slab completely of the same, and discovered that it was a likeness of one of the great old kings; but while this slab was soft material, exposed to the sun for hardening, a dog had walked across it and the track of his feet had obliterated some of the finest features of that face. It is a severe speech, we know, but we honestly believe ourselves justified in employing it. It is the work of a hound of hell to destroy the features of the soul by instruction in infidelity. From such tracts, the souls of many men will never be recovered. The finer features God meant to be found there were obliterated while life was yet youthful, while it was yet in a plastic state. This, also, is a violation of the sixth commandment.
There are false prophets in present-day pulpits. These men are soul murderers! Christ said they should come and that they would deny the Lord that bought them and thereby misdirect their fellows and send their souls to doom.
Many years ago in North Dakota, a train was fighting its way across the prairie as best it could against a high and furious wind and multiplied flakes that blackened the way. A nervous woman asked the conductor two or three times to be very careful to get her off at her station, and he sought to quiet her with assurances of attention. A traveling salesman, sitting just back of her, became interested, and, prompted by a righteous motive, said, Madam, be at ease, I know this road well. I will put you off at the right place. A station was called, and, speaking to her, he said, Your stop is the next! The train ran a bit of a way and came to a standstill, and with the utmost kindness, he assisted her from the steps to the ground, and, pointing across said, The station is right over there, and climbed back upon the moving train. Ten minutes later, the conductor came through and called the name of the station. The traveling man started up with wild eyes and cried, My God, dont tell me that! We stopped there ten minutes ago ! No, said the conductor, the storm was so furious that the engineer feared to run at high rate over a crossing lest some one should be there and stopped to see if the road crossing his track was clear. Then I have doomed a woman, answered the traveling salesman. I put her off at that stop. The train backed up, but the search for her failed. People tell me from time to time that modernists are sincere men; that they believe themselves to be right. It may be so; but misdirection, when sincerely made, sends people to their doom as certainly as though made in insincerity. That woman never reached safety but perished that day in that storm on the plain of Dakota, and her body was found the next spring, when the snow was melted.
Hear the Word of the Lord,
Son of man, speak to the children of thy people, and say unto them, When I bring the sword upon a land, if the people of the land take a man of their coasts, and set him for their watchman: If when he seeth the sword come upon the land, he blow the trumpet, and warn the people; Then, whosoever heareth the sound of the trumpet, and taketh not warning; if the sword come, and take him away, his blood shall be upon his own head. He heard the sound of the trumpet, and took not warning; his blood shall be upon him. But he that taketh warning shall deliver his soul. But if the watchman see the sword come, and blow not the trumpet, and the people be not warned; if the sword come, and take any person from among them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at the watchmans hand (Eze 33:2-6).
The minister, then, who gives not the right sound, must answer to God for souls.
The neglect of ones own soul is a violation of the sixth commandment. If there is one thing made more clear than another by the Bible, it is the Divine provision for salvation, and that, whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish. But while this is clearly the Divine provision and plan, the same Scriptures make it equally clear that certain men will not have it so, to whom Christ was compelled to say, I will, but ye will not. The fate of such is written into the Epistle to the Heb 10:28-31,
He that despised Moses law died without mercy under two or three witnesses: Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the Blood of the Covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace? For we know Him that hath said, Vengeance belongeth unto Me, I will recompense saith the Lord. And again, The Lord shall judge His people. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
Fuente: The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist by Riley
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.Exo. 20:13
THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT
One great source of mischief to society is disrespect to parents; against this God has guarded His people, by directing them to honour their father and their mother. Another great source of evil in the world is to be found in the angry passions of men, which have hurried them on to thousands of violent and cruel actions against each other. God has given this command in His Word, Thou shalt not kill. In order to see the true tendency of our corrupt nature in this matter, we must go to those lands in which the counteracting influence of Christianity is unknown. In heathen lands now interminable wars and private murders quite thin the population. Look at civilised nations; contemplate the wars in which they have been engaged. The passions which lead to war are here condemned.
I. Let us look at its meaningThou shalt not kill. This command is not to be taken in an unlimited sense, as prohibiting all bloodshed, because there are certain limitations to it which the Word of God lays down, and it is one amongst many passages of Scripture which show that we must constantly seek for those limitations which God has set. God has Himself shown that there are some cases in which bloodshed is not only allowable, but right (Gen. 9:5). Long after, when the old Mosaic law was established, the life of a murderer was by that law to be taken, and there was to be no atonement made. It is thus Gods will that the murderer should be put to death. Nay, further, it is His will that other intolerable evils which would otherwise overrun society should be checked forcibly; and if, in the effort to prevent them, blood be taken, it is agreeable to His will (Exo. 22:2). Defensive wars may be placed upon this ground: if the thief, who broke into a dwelling, was to be resisted even to death, it must be agreeable to the Divine will that, when a multitude of men combine to overrun a peaceable community, they should be put to death. Human life may be taken when necessary to the repression of violent crimes, it may not be taken on the mere plea of expediency. But to take away human life on any other pretext whateverto take it away from revenge or passionto take it away unjustly, under colour of law or without law, by means of the magistrate or by personal violenceis absolutely contrary to the express will of God. It is contrary to His will that we should take away our own lives. Suicide leaves no space for repentance. It closes life by an act of rebellion against God. Even heathens could speak of the cowardice of suicide; because it never springs from any other cause than a mans incapability of bearing the sorrow which Divine Providence has imposed upon him, or which arises from his own fault. But we especially refer this command to others. Sometimes it has happened that men have taken away the life of a fellow-creature by means of unjust and oppressive laws. That was no justification for their conduct in the sight of God; it must be murder, because they were the direct cause. If a man has made use of another as his instrument in attempting to murder, he is the murderer in Gods sight. David, rather than Joab, was the murderer of Uriah. Cruelty leads to murder, as in the case of the oppressed slave. Excessive work leads to murder, and those who require it are guilty of murder. But the command of God bids us bind those angry passions which tend to murder. We are called to check all strife (Pro. 17:14). We must avoid hatred, as it leads to strife. In the Word of God, hatred is said to be murder. We must not permit the feeling of revenge (Mat. 5:39). Envy is also the source of murder; resist it. This occasioned the first murder; it nearly wrought the death of Joseph. Resist pride, as by pride cometh contention. Also the command not to kill, enjoins upon us the cherishing those opposite affections by which the temptation to kill shall be destroyed, and those passions controlled which are the first step to murder. Instead of indulging revenge, we are told, Therefore, if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink, &c. Instead of allowing ourselves to hate our fellows, the command is given that we should cherish brotherly kindness. Instead of being allowed to envy our fellow-creatures because of their superior merit, we are told to honour all men Instead of indulging pride, we are to be subject one to another. We are to love our enemies, &c.
II. How we may strengthen this principle of obedience which we are called to cherish. When God has said to us, Thou shalt not kill, He has enjoined upon each of us to take the means, which are prescribed in the Word or presented by circumstances, by which we may secure obedience to that command. Prayer is necessary; thus grace comes to the soul. We have no reason to expect the aid of God, except we ask it. We must present to our minds those considerations which tend to strengthen the principle of obedience. Think of the authority of God in enacting this law; He calls us to repress all angry passions. Let us remember Gods forbearance to us, and that He loved us while enemies. Take care to avoid the beginning of strife; if called to it in the way of duty guard the motives. Be careful in your friendships; make no friendship with an angry man. Let us guard all prejudices against others. Let us not fancy evil against any one. Let us form those habits which cherish all the purest and best affections. Let us enter upon this duty in dependence upon Gods grace. There are many motives to it. It will bring us many personal comforts; it tends to give us the purest and most steadfast happiness on this side of eternity, and to prepare us for that celestial abode where no angry passion enters. It is calculated to benefit society and to adorn the doctrine of Christ.B. W. Noel, M.A.
ILLUSTRATIONS
BY
THE REV. WILLIAM ADAMSON
Murder-Memories! Exo. 20:13. Amongst the numerous converts to God amongst the Red Indians of N.W. America was a great chief, noted for his many savage murders. When brought to a saving knowledge of the truth, his exclamation was, Oh! why did you not come sooner; and then those whom I have killed would have heard those glad tidings. During a long and useful Christian old age, he frequently lamented the fact that he had by death prevented some of his fellow-creatures from hearing the Gospels joyful sound. Even in the closing scene of life, his thoughts wandered to these murdered ones, whether he should meet them in the other world. He felt how awful a thing it was, even in heathen ignorance, to send a fellow-creature, whether friend or foe, unprepared into eternity. He had never read Shakespeare, but he still could enter into the feelings of Hamlets ghost, who dwells so much on the fact that he was killed
With all his sins broad blown,
Unhonselled, unanointed, unannealed.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
(13) Thou shalt not kill.From the peculiar duties owed by children to their parents, the Divine legislator went on to lay down those general duties which men owe to their fellow-men. And of these the first is that of respecting their life. The security of life is the primary object of government; and it has been well said that men originally coalesced into States with a view to self-preservation (Arist., Pol. i. 1). All written codes forbid murder; and in communities which are without written codes an unwritten law condemns it. When God set a mark upon Cain (Gen. 4:15), He marked thereby His abhorrence of the murderer. The seven precepts of Noah included one which distinctly forbade the taking of human life (Gen. 9:6). In all countries and among all peoples, a natural instinct or an unwritten tradition placed murder among the worst of crimes, and made its penalty death. The Mosaic legislation on the point was differenced from others principally by the care it took to distinguish between actual murder, manslaughter (Exo. 21:13), death by misadventure (Num. 35:23), and justifiable homicide (Exo. 22:2). Before, however, it made these distinctions, the great principle of the sanctity of human life required to be broadly laid down; and so the law was given in the widest possible termsThou shalt not kill. Exceptions were reserved till later.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT, Exo 20:13.
13. Thou shalt not kill Better, thou shalt not commit murder . This first commandment of the second table corresponds noticeably with the first of the previous table, as a reference to Gen 9:6, will serve to show: “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God made he man . ” The murderer, therefore, is regarded as one who wickedly destroys God’s image in man, and so most basely assaults God himself . Suicide is, accordingly, prohibited by this commandment . The Hebrew legislation everywhere enhances the sacredness of human life . All the precepts in Exo 21:12-30, aim to guard life from violence . If any man by carelessness or neglect occasioned the death of another, he brought blood-guiltiness upon his house . Deu 22:8. A murder by an unknown hand would pollute the very land in which it was committed until suitable expiation were made. Deu 21:1-9. Our Lord took up this law for special treatment, and taught that he who cherished anger against his neighbour was guilty before God of the spirit of murder. Mat 5:21-24. John also enlarges on this same profound idea . 1Jn 2:9-11 ; 1Jn 3:12-15. As the not having any other God instead of Jehovah is at the basis of the laws of the first table, so the not hating one’s neighbour is at the basis of all those of the second. Hence the two great positive commands, inclusive of all others: first, thou shalt love God with all thy heart; and, second, thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. According to Num 35:31, no satisfaction was allowable for the life of a murderer but the extreme penalty of the law. No commutation and no pardon could be granted to one clearly convicted of murder. The shallow sentimentalism of modern life has in numerous places cried out against this law, and sought to class it with barbarities which ought to be set aside. Also some learned and thoughtful men, holding the notion that civil government is merely a “social compact,” or that the object of penalty is solely to prevent crime, and is not based upon moral desert, have advocated the abolition of capital punishment. But it is shown that where another punishment has been substituted for the death penalty, capital crime has increased, and states which have tried the experiment have found it a failure, and have restored the severer law. Those who oppose the death penalty for murder often exhibit far more sympathy for the criminal than for his victims. The biblical doctrine is clear and decisive: (1.) He who takes a human life forfeits his own, and so deserves death. (2.) The common safety and public good demand that the just penalty be speedily executed. (3.) The New Testament, far from conflicting with the Old on this point, confirms it by representing the civil magistrate as God’s minister, bearing the sword to be a terror to evildoers, and to execute wrath upon them. Rom 13:1-6. The words of our Lord, often quoted as inconsistent with capital punishment, have no reference whatever to the execution of righteous laws upon the guilty, but to man’s personal and private relations . To explain such precepts as those of Mat 5:38-45, as indicating the true methods of civil government is preposterous in the extreme, and, if thus practically applied, would overthrow all righteous government and law. Equally absurd is it to appeal to Rom 12:17-21; for if the officers of law and justice should proceed with murderers, thieves, and other criminals as there enjoined, it would be a direct encouragement for all sorts of evil doers to multiply their nefarious deeds. All these fallacies of exegesis arise from confounding private and personal relations with the administration of public justice. With one who is incapable of making and holding these distinctions in mind, it would be idle to argue the question of capital or any other punishment by the State.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
The Second Five Words – Man’s Responsibility Towards God For His Neighbour ( Exo 20:13-17 ).
These commands are absolute. They reveal the sanctity in God’s eyes of a man’s right to fair treatment by his neighbour in all spheres of his life. They are apodictic in form, that is in the form of a direct command that must be obeyed. Later on penalties for breach of these commands will be outlined, but here the concentration is on what God requires and expects of His people. There is no lessening of that demand. It is sinful man who says, ‘what will happen to me if I do this?’ and God was requiring them not to be sinful.
Some commentators lay stress on the fact that these are negative commandments. But while that is true we must recognise what negative commandments are. What they are really saying is that Israel may live their lives freely and positively, although with the few exceptions then given. On the whole then the thought is positive. It is the exceptions that determine the wideness or otherwise of the rule, and these leave wide scope for positive living. The exceptions simply put certain limitations on excessive behaviour.
Exo 20:13
“You shall not murder.”
This commandment upholds the sanctity of human life. But as given it has nothing to do with killing in war (a different Hebrew word is always used for that) or the death penalty. Both were sanctioned in the detailed enactments of the Law (see for example Deu 20:1 on; Exo 21:12-17). The principle of a life for a life held firm (Exo 21:23), although in the end it was deliberate premeditated murder that demanded the full consequences so that there was no sanctuary for such a murderer (Exo 21:14). The commandment meant no killing apart from judicial killing and the right to defend one’s own life and the lives of one’s family and people. But defence of one’s person or family or land from those who would themselves kill or capture was considered good reason within the law for killing. So was protection of property where the killing occurred during the process of the theft, especially at night (Exo 22:2).
It was therefore recognised that a family had a responsibility to avenge the death of a another member of the family. It was a life for a life. That is why ‘cities of refuge’ were arranged where those who had killed, but not deliberately, could flee for protection. No one could be slain in a city of refuge, but the ‘avengers of blood’ had the right to ask for their expulsion if they could prove that they were guilty of deliberate murder.
The forbidding of killing necessarily included the forbidding of the intent to kill, as the principle behind the tenth commandment brings out, and Jesus expanded this to include destructive anger and contempt against another (Mat 5:21-22)
Exo 20:14
“You shall not commit adultery.”
This commandment upholds the sanctity of the marriage relationship. To make love to another man’s wife or betrothed was absolutely forbidden. Later this would be expanded to allow the death penalty for the offence (Lev 20:10), but we need not doubt that it was already so. It was seen as expunging evil (Deu 22:22). The wife too was to be put to death, and a betrothed woman if she was a willing participant (Deu 22:22-24). This was on the basis that while a wife would not be away from the protection of her husband, a betrothed may be. There were lesser penalties where the woman was not married or betrothed because then the sealed marriage bond was not broken. Marriage and betrothal were seen as resulting in a sacred bond.
Exo 20:15
“You shall not steal.” This commandment upholds the sanctity of a man’s property. To obtain a man’s property by false means was forbidden. Penalties were, however, less than for murder and adultery (see Exo 22:1-4) unless the theft was of a human person, a kidnap (Exo 21:16). This, of course, applied to property within the community.
It must be remembered in all these cases that there were no reliable prisons. It was death or fine, and in the case of murder or adultery a fine was not seen as sufficient. These cases struck at the very heart of God.
Exo 20:16
“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour.”
This commandment especially upholds the sanctity of the courts of justice. It refers to giving false testimony in a court of law, or in any situation where a man’s life or reputation could be at stake. If proved the punishment was that which the innocent man would have suffered had he been found guilty, which could include death (Deu 19:16-21). But it also includes the attacking of another by lies (Pro 6:19). The thought is that dishonesty that harms another, whether by libel or slander or whispering, is abhorrent to God.
Exo 20:17
“You shall not covet your neighbour’s house, you shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is your neighbour’s.”
This reaffirms the sanctity of a man’s wife and possessions. It is in fact the corollary of all that has been said. All the previous commandments have dealt with men’s actions. Here God probes to the heart, the spring from which the actions come. A man is not even to consider attempting to take such things away from his neighbour. Such an attitude of heart and mind is against the covenant. This remarkable law applies personally and inwardly. It could often not be judged by outsiders. But each person was to recognise that it would be judged by God. God would know. It reveals that every man is responsible for his thoughts as well as his actions. The positive side will later be ‘you shall love your neighbour as yourself’ (Lev 19:18). God is inculcating an open and honest attitude towards one’s neighbour without deceit or guile or envy, because in the end all belongs to God and He gives as He will.
For it is not only the object of coveting who can be hurt by coveting. Coveting hurts the coveter. It is destructive of all that is good. It proceeds from and distorts the heart, causes unrest and trouble within, and produces sin, which comes to completion in the act (Jas 1:14-15). Achan was the perfect example of how coveting takes possession of a man by stages. ‘I saw — I coveted — I took’, and it finally destroyed him (Jos 7:21). Pro 21:26 contrasts the greedy coveter with the generous giver, the one totally inward looking and turned in on himself, the other outward going and generous and open. The coveter ignores God’s requirements and God’s word, ‘incline my heart to Your testimonies, and not to covetousness’ (Psa 119:36). Hebrews summed it up in another way, ‘Be content with such things as you have’ (Heb 13:5, compare Luk 3:14; Php 4:11; 1Ti 6:6). The one who is content is at peace, but the coveter finds no rest. Indeed covetousness is described as a form of idolatry (Eph 5:5), and keeps a man from God (1Ti 6:10).
“You shall not covet your neighbour’s house, you shall not covet your neighbour’s wife –.’ A man’s house and wife were of equal importance as against the rest, as is proved by the fact that they were the only two governed directly by a verb. His house was his possession in the land and included his land. It was the mainstay of his family life. It was his inheritance. His wife was a part of himself. But in the end all that truly belonged to him was sacrosanct.
Note that this is the only commandment where the verb is repeated. In a sense it parallels the verbs in ‘you shall not bow down to them nor serve them’ (Exo 20:3). It has double intensity. Such was God’s warning against covetousness.
Then the voice ceased.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Exo 20:13. Thou shalt not kill For a full exposition of this commandment we refer to that of our Saviour, Mat 5:21; Mat 5:48 see Gen 9:6. The words are better rendered, thou shalt do no murder. And if we are not to murder others, certainly not ourselves, so that suicide is here plainly and absolutely forbidden, as well as, according to our Saviour’s exposition, all those angry and resentful passions, which are no less criminal in themselves than they are fatal in their consequences. Hallett, upon this commandment, says, I cannot conclude upon it without bearing my testimony against the Alexanders and Caesars of the earth, as some of the most wicked and odious of men, who delighted in shedding the blood of millions, only for the sake of getting a name among men as wicked as themselves. But, worse again than these monsters, are those eldest sons of Satan, the inquisitors and persecutors, who impiously murder their better brethren for this very reason, because they are better than themselves; because they had rather die the most tormenting death than break God’s holy commandments!
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
This is the sixth commandment. Our Lord explains the extent of it, Mat 5:21-26 .
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
XVII
THE DECALOGUE THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT
Exo 20:13
“Honour thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land which Jehovah thy God giveth thee.”
1. In what way is the Fifth Commandment distinguished from the others?
Ans. In two particulars: (1) It is the connecting link between the commandments Godward and the commandments manward. It links the two tables, and (2) in the two parts it is the First Commandment with a promise.
2. How does it connect with the Godward commandments?
Ans. In a sense, the parent is in the place of God to the child, and God’s fatherhood is the archetype of all families, as you find it expressed in Ephesians: “For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father, for whom every family is named” (Eph 3:14-15 ).
3. How did the ancient Romans express the idea of this connection of the Fifth Commandment?
Ans. They used one word to describe the dutifulness toward God and toward man, and that is the word, pietas or piety. Hence Vergil, in describing the reverence that Aeneas pays to his father, Anchises, calls him “pious Aeneas.” In other words, it is impious to disobey a commandment that relates to God. It is impious to disobey a commandment that relates to the parents, but, while it is wicked, it is not impious to kill, to steal, to lie. It is important for you to notice that distinction, viz.: That the violation of any of the subsequent commandments is wickedness; it is sin, but a violation of the four commandments relating to God and the one commandment relating to the parent is impious. Duty to parents and duty to God is therefore called piety.
4. In what New Testament passage does our King James Version express the same thought?
Ans. 1Ti 5:4 : “But if any widow bath children or grandchildren, let them learn -first to shew piety toward their own family, and to requite their parents: for this is acceptable in the sight of God.” Our English translators had the thought that sin against parents is impiety.
5. What masterpieces of tragedy are based on the impiety of children?
Ans. Shakespeare’s King Lear, who divided his kingdom between his two elder daughters, Gorneril and Regan, who drove him insane by their ingratitude. “Orestes,” son of Agamemnon, whose murder he avenged by killing his mother. “O Edipus,” son of Laius, king of Thebes, slew his father. We have thus seen how the Fifth Commandment connects with those that relate to God.
6. How does the Fifth Commandment connect with the following ones that relate to man?
Ans. As the parent is in the place of God to the child, so society, the school and the state are in the place of the parent to the student and the city.
7. What title is given to an institution of learning which expresses this thought?
Ans. Alma Mater.
8. What name is given to rulers?
Ans. “Sire,” “Father”; the Indian will tell you of the White Father at Washington. And the Yankees used to sing: “We are coming, Father Abraham!”
9. What, then, are the duties of children to parents?
Ans. They may be summed up in three heads: (1) honor; (2) obedience; (3) to care for them in their necessity.
10. In what ways do children in modern times violate this law?
Ans. Suppose a child calls his father “the old man” or “the governor,” or any appellation of that kind; that shows lack of honor. If a child by his speech so answers back that it is irreverent and disrespectful, it violates this command. If a child disregards an injunction solemnly laid upon him by a parent, that is a violation of this command. How often is that done in modern times, and to a degree never dreamed of in the olden times! Now the child wonders how much more he knows than his “daddy.” It is an amazing thing to him how much smarter he is and how much better he can manage things.
11. What remarkable lesson of our Lord exposes a hypocritical evasion of the law that a child should care for a necessitous parent?
Ans. The account is in Mat 15:3-6 , also in Mark. He said to the Pharisees, “You make void the law of God with your tradition; you say with reference to any part of your property, Corban, that is, it is devoted to God, and therefore we can’t help take care of our father or mother because we can’t use devoted money for that.” He said it was a hypocritical evasion of an opportunity that couldn’t be alienated; that the child must take care of his necessitous parent. This commandment is expressed somewhat as if it were absolute: “Children, obey your parents in all things.”
12. What is the limitation of this law? Is it absolute? or has it limitations? For example, if a parent should command a child to steal, does the law, “Children, obey your parents,” require that child to steal? Then what is the limitation?
Ans. Paul puts it in these words: “Children, obey your parents in the Lord,” that is, obey your parents in everything that comes in the sphere of a parent; not within the sphere of God. God’s law is paramount and you can’t, under the idea of obedience to a parent, violate the law of God.
13. What are the duties of parents to children?
Ans. They are to love them, to nurture them, that is, care for them physically, mentally, and spiritually. They are to instruct them in matters of religion, and they are to discipline them when they disobey. No matter how high is the sanctity of a parental law, the law of a parent over a child, it never justifies the parent in overlooking the individuality of the child. -For example, “Parents, provoke not your children to wrath.” Don’t forget that they are individual creatures; that they are sensitive. I have known parents to shatter the last remnant of reverence that a child had for the parents by mocking the child, by disregarding the feelings of the child, when it was utterly unnecessary.
14. In what way do many modern parents evade this law?
Ans. (1) By race suicide. That is particularly so in the case of the “Four Hundred,” the wealthy, the great. They want to shun entirely the responsibility of parentage. In the next place (2) a mother violates it when she is so swallowed up with the cares of society that she neglects her own children and leaves their care and their training to irresponsible persons, servants. According to my interpretation of a passage from Paul where he is contrasting the sphere of man and woman, he says that the man’s sphere is a public sphere and he must live his life there. Then over against that he says, “But the woman shall live in her children, if they continue stedfast in faith and sobriety and in good works.” She lives her life reflexively in her children. We have an illustration of that in an incident of Roman history, where a fashionable woman flashing with jewels came to exhibit her finery to a dignified Roman matron, Cornelia, and Cornelia sent for her two boys, the Gracchi, and holding one in each arm, she said, “These are my jewels; I shine in these boys; I live in my children.” Parents evade this law in devolving upon some other agency the moral teaching of the child. For instance, “I will turn it over to the Sunday school,” or, “I will turn it over to the preacher.” Recently my wife gently took hold of me and said, “I wish that you, more than anybody in the world, would in your own way take our little boy and teach him the Ten Commandments, so he will never forget them.” I accepted the suggestion and the implied rebuke, whether she meant it or not. It is a matter that we cannot with impunity devolve upon other people.
15. Cite examples of the effect of this law both ways on nations.
Ans. I could cite a good many, but I take two great nations that lie side by side, Germany and France. In Germany the family is honored. There is no race suicide. They count “children an heritage from the Lord; as arrows of the Almighty, and blessed is the man that hath his quiver full of them.” They count the home a great place. In France, there is race suicide. Fewer children are born in France than in any other nation. Less home life; they want to live on the boulevards, in the parks, in the restaurants. They want to devolve upon the state the care of the child. They are perishing, while Germany is taking the world. Bonaparte saw that in his time, and when Madam De Stael said to him, “Who is the greatest woman in France?” he replied, “Madam, the one who raises the most soldiers for the French army.” She thought he would say, “You are.” But he saw what was the matter and that France was going to perish for the lack of men, while there would be in some German regiments ten and eleven brothers in the same company.
16. Who is the most illustrious example of parents keeping this law?
Ans. In Gen 18:19 , we have an account of which God is the witness himself, saying, “Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him; for I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him that they shall keep the way of the Lord to do justice and judgment.” Abraham’s attitude toward the family is the most striking and the most illustrious in the Old Testament.
17. What is the most noted example in the Old Testament of a parent disobeying this law?
Ans. 1 Samuel 3:-11-14 : “And the Lord said to Samuel, Behold, I will do a thing in Israel at which both the ears of every one that heareth shall tingle. In that day I will perform against Eli a thing which I have spoken concerning his house: when I begin I will also make an end. For I have told him that I will judge his house for ever for the iniquity which he knoweth; because his sons made themselves vile, and he restrained them not. And therefore I have sworn unto the house of Eli, that the iniquity of Eli’s house shall not be purged with sacrifice nor offering for ever.”
18. Cite the New Testament passage showing the most illustrious example of obedience to the Fifth Commandment.
Ans. Luk 2:51 : Our Lord, though in his divinity, the Son of God, perfectly obeyed the Fifth Commandment in that he was subject unto his parents.
19. Show the bearing of this law on a high New Testament office.
Ans. 1Ti 3:4 : A bishop must be “one that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity.” I heard a preacher once on his examination for ordination say, putting his finger on that scripture, “That is the only qualification I can claim. My children do obey me, and I do keep them in subjection to God’s law and I do teach them God’s word.”
20. What is the promise of this commandment?
Ans. “That you may live long in the land,” or have long life on earth. That obedience to parents and this is a tremendous proposition obedience to parents, is life preserving. It gives life. I mean natural life here in this world.
21. Cite a proverb illustrating this.
Ans. Pro 6:20-22 . Notice and see the effect of obedience to parents on the life in the fulfillment of this promise: “My son, keep the commandment of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother; bind them continually upon thy heart; tie them about thy neck. When thou walkest, it shall lead thee; when thou sleepest, it shall watch over thee; and when thou wakest, it shall talk with thee.”
22. What is most remarkable Old Testament example of the fulfillment of this promise, and what about this example today?
Ans. Jer 35:18-19 : “And Jeremiah said unto the house of the Rechabites, Thus saith Jehovah of hosts, the God of Israel: Because ye have obeyed the commandment of Jonadab your father and kept all his precepts, and done according unto all that he hath commanded you; therefore thus saith Jehovah of hosts, the God of Israel: Jonadab the son of Rechab shall not want a man to stand before me for ever.” What about the last part of this promise? In Geikie’8 “Hours with the Bible,” he cites a testimony from a traveller who in 1862 found a tribe of these Rechabites near the Dead Sea still living and flourishing, just as Jeremiah describes them. It shows the power of obedience to this law of life.
23. Cite a proverb showing that this law may be violated by a look or gesture.
Ans. Pro 30:17 : “The eye that mocketh at his father and despiseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat it.” You see that child minded, but mocked. He obeyed with his body, but looked disobedient.
24. Relate the incident connecting Dr. Adam Clarke, the great commentator, with that proverb.
Ans. Here is the substance of it: “My mother was a Scotchwoman and very stern in the teaching of God’s law to her children, and in the enforcement of that law in the family life, and we were reared under it. One day she told me to do a certain thing, and I didn’t dare to disobey her, but I looked saucy at her, and she stood over me and shook her finger in my face and quoted that proverb. It went through me like a dagger, and the next day I was out in the woods and a raven lit in the tree just above me, hollering ‘Caw, caw, caw!’ I threw my hands over my eyes and ran all the way home, crying, ‘Oh my eyes! my eyes! my eyes!’ “
25. Cite a Mosaic elaboration of this law binding parents to give this religious instruction to their children.
Ans. Deu 6:7-9 , has an elaboration of this commandment; that the parents shall teach all of this law to the children when they shall wake up and when they shall walk out of the gate. It shall pervade the home life, and then walk; it goes on to say that this law shall be inscribed over the doors and windows and gates, so that when the boy looks around the last thing at night, he reads, “Honour thy father and thy mother.” When he steps out of his bedroom, he steps under the inscription, “Honour thy father and thy mother.” When going through the gate he sees, “Honour thy father and thy mother.”
26. What people now living show the most reverence to parents?
Ans. The Jews, Chinese, Japanese, and Germans. In a recent magazine is an article by a cultivated young Japanese who has travelled in the United States and was very much impressed with many things he saw over here that he thought his people would copy with profit; but, says he, “I saw some things in which the American people should learn of us. I saw a Japanese boy on a train listening to an American mother and her son, and the mother said to the son, ‘Son, go yonder and bring me a drink of water,’ to which the son replied, ‘I won’t do it.’ That little Japanese jumped as if a dynamite bomb had exploded under him. It appalled him; he had never seen anything like it. You might cross Japan from every direction of the compass and you would never see anything that would approach that, where a child would say to his parent ‘I won’t do it.’ “
27. What denomination best obeys the law in the religious instruction of children?
Ans. The Presbyterians excel the Baptists, I am sorry to say. My mother was a Presbyterian. They make mighty good Baptists when you get them to come over. I learned the Presbyterian idea of family instruction from my mother.
28. What great Texas preacher preached on family governments all over Texas?
Ans. Dr. Rufus C. Burleson. He was so much impressed with the importance of family religion, family discipline, family instruction in religious matters and its bearing on the destinies of society and the state, that he preached that sermon, I suppose, 500 times in different parts of Texas, taking old Eli for a text.
29. Cite the most exquisite poem in literature on family religion.
Ans. Robert Burns’ “Cotter’s Saturday Night.”
30. What does Dr. Gambrell say about the value of that poem?
Ans. ” ‘The Cotter’s Saturday Night’ is worth more than all the higher critic literature that was ever written,” and when he said it I felt like going up and shaking his hand. Oftentimes at night I have gotten that poem out and read it again and again. It touches the heart, it gets inside of all the experiences with which we make ourselves, and behind which we intrench ourselves. It deals with lowly people, people next to the ground, and yet it deals with the very heart of religion. I have wanted Dr. Gambrell to make that poem the subject of a lecture in order to fix on the minds of our young people the kind of literature in which the real gems are to be found.
31. Show how disobedience to this law makes bad citizens and so undermines the state.
Ans. The answer can be found in any town, in the country, in the state. It can be found on every page of history, that the boy who disregards father and mother can’t make a good citizen. Absalom, the rebel against parental authority, was also the rebel against civil authority. Take the “street Arab,” the one that mocks at the idea of parental and family governments what respect will he have for the sheriff, or the judge, or the governor or the President? In other words it is from the family as the center that all society and civil law radiates and if you strike that down there is not anything upon which to build the superstructure of a permanent government. It must start from the home. It is the sweet reminiscences of home that safeguard the boy in all his after life. The first time I ever saw Wordsworth’s poem it captured me: How dear to my heart are the scenes of my childhood, When fond recollection presents them to view The orchard, the meadow, the deep tangled wildwood, And every loved spot which my infancy knew. How those scenes come up later in life and what a preserving power they have over us! Go back to the time when we were little; there are the sacred names: Father, Mother, Sister, Brother, Uncle, Aunt, Cousin, and woe to the lad, or pity to the lad, that never knew them that never had those surroundings. Much to his credit is it that without those surroundings he learns to fear God and takes a man’s place among men.
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
XVIII
THE DECALOGUE THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT
Exo 20:13
1. Who was the first murderer?
Ans. The devil. So John in Joh 8:44 says, “He was a murderer from the beginning.”
2. Which was the first murder?
Ans. In Gen 4:8-15 , Cain, under the promptings of Satan, killed his brother Abel.
3. Which was the first penal law against murder?
Ans. I will quote it for you; it preceded this law we are on now: “And surely your blood, the blood of your lives, will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it; and at the hand of man, even at the hand of every man’s brother, will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God made he man” (Gen 9:5-6 ). This is the Noachian law given to Noah when he was the second representative head of the human race, after the flood, and particularly do you need to know the reason assigned: “For in the image of God made he man.” Therein is the heinousness of murder, viz.: that man was made in the image of God.
4. Now repeat this commandment.
Ans. “Thou shalt not kill.” I stated in the preceding chapter that the great covenant adopted at Sinai was set forth in the book of Exodus 19-23, and that covenant consisted of three parts: (1) This moral code which we are discussing; (2) The civil code arising from it; (3) The law of approach to God through the altar.
5. As that whole covenant from Exodus 19-24 is the constitution, what special Mosaic statutes were derived from this commandment?
Ans. (1) We will take up the case of homicide, which means the killing of a man (from homo, man, and caedis or caedo , to kill). The first Mosaic legislation concerning homicide, which is murder, has the death penalty. I want you to look at the special legislation on that subject. You will find this law with the death penalty assessed clearly stated in the following scriptures: Exo 21:12 ; Exo 21:14 ; Lev 24:17 ; Num 35:30-33 ; Deu 27:24 . Now, Moses developed special statutes out of this constitution, and every one of these statutes which I have recited you are to read carefully, and you will see that in any of the cases specified, this homicide is murder, with the penalty of death.
(2) The next special legislation on the subject is found in Num 35:16-21 , and it is homicide where malice is presumed because of the deadly weapon used. Let us turn and read it, for I want you to get this Mosaic legislation clearly in your mind, for all of our laws by which we go in our courts today are derived from this law. There is not a single principle of law, as attached to murder, in the government of any civilized country that is not derivable from the Mosaic law: “But if he smote him with an instrument of iron, so that he died, he is a murderer.” Now, if you were to hit a man with a straw and it were to kill him, you could not prove malice, because the thing with which you struck was not calculated to kill. Here is where the weapon comes in and helps to determine murder, and you will hear the lawyers pleading that in all the murder cases that come up. “The murderer shall surely be put to death. And if he smote him with a stone in the hand, whereby a man may die, and he died, he is a murderer; the murderer shall surely be put to: death. Or if he smote him with a weapon of wood in the hand, whereby a man may die, and he died, he is a murderer; the murderer shall surely be put to death.” Suppose I kill one with a cane, (and I have one with which one could kill a man) it would be murder. “And if he thrust him of hatred, or buried at him, lying in wait, so that he died, or in enmity smote him with his hand, so that he died; he that smote him shall surely be put to death; he is a murderer.” So you see the idea of murder there is that this man, even though he has not a weapon, lying in wait, he deliberately got his victim, having come along and anticipated it. Suppose he just leaps out and grasps him by the throat and chokes him to death? The law declares that murder on account of its malice; it was murder prompted by hatred, on account of its deliberation as he lay in wait for him.
(3) The next case is found in Deu 27:25 : “Cursed be he that taketh a bribe to slay an innocent person.” The first thing here is not personal animosity against the one killed, but the murderer accepting a bribe to kill him. He kills him for money; it is assassination for bribery; that is murder. It would be no defense for him to say, “I had no sort of enmity against that man; I never saw him in my life before.” But inasmuch as he took money as the price of killing, it is murder.
(4) The next case is homicide that results from false testimony, Deu 19:16-19 . Here’s a man accused before the courts with an offense, and the witness through whose testimony he was accused lost his life because of perjury; then that witness, though he did not actually do the killing, committed murder, and the Mosaic law says you must do to that witness, when you have proof of his perjury, what his testimony had done to the other man. If through false evidence he had a man hanged, why then you hang him, because that is murder.
(5) The next is a case of homicide resulting from criminal neglect, and the first case I take up under that charge is cited in Exo 21:29 , right after the giving of this code. Now here is a special statute that applies to that code: that if a man is gored to death by a vicious ox or bull, and there is evidence that the owner of that ox had been notified of the vicious character of that animal and did not keep him in, and through the running of it at large this man was killed, then the owner of that ox shall be put to death. That is criminal negligence, not safeguarding the life of others. If a little girl was going to school, and a man kept a bloodhound, a ferocious animal, and he should leap the fence and tear the throat of that little girl till she died, that man could be hanged under the Mosaic law; it was a criminal neglect.
The next case of criminal neglect cited is Deu 22:8 . When a man built a new house (you know the houses in that country were all flat on top) if the man did not erect battlements to protect anybody that might walk on the roof, or if children playing thoughtlessly got too close to the edge, fell off, and killed themselves, that man who did not put up battlements was guilty of murder; it was a criminal neglect. The third case of criminal neglect is Exo 22:23 : If two men get to fighting in a house where people are, or on the street, and as a result of their fighting an innocent bystander is killed, they are guilty of murder, because that was not the place to fight. Whoever fights in a public place where the people have a right to be, and though he shoots at his enemy, misses him and kills somebody that he did not aim at all, he is guilty of murder. It wasn’t the place to shoot.
The next case is that of a man punishing a slave, and while the weapon he uses is not called a deadly weapon, yet if he makes that punishment so extreme that the slave dies under the punishment, he is a murderer; and he could be put to death; but in order for him to be guilty of murder, the slave must die under the punishment. He might wound him so that he did not die for a week or two, then the law would not apply. But if he dies under the punishment, it is murder.
(6) The next law is expressed in Deu 21:1 . I had better quote that to you, as some of you prohibitionists, if you do as I used to do, will make a great deal of it: “If one be found slain in the land which Jehovah God giveth thee to possess it, lying in the field, and it be not known who hath smitten him; then thy elders and thy judges shall come forth, and they shall measure unto the cities that are around about him that is slain; and it shall be, that the city which is nearest unto the slain man, even the elders of that city shall take a heifer of the herd, which hath not been wrought with, and which hath not drawn in the yoke . . . And all the elders of that city shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the valley; and they shall answer and say, Our hands have not shed this blood, neither have our eyes seen it. Forgive, O Jehovah, thy people Israel, whom thou hast redeemed, and suffer not innocent blood to remain in the midst of thy people Israel. And the blood shall be forgiven them. So shalt thou put away the innocent blood from the midst of thee, when thou shalt do that which is right in the eyes of Jehovah.” So that those elders who had washed their hands over the slain heifer and in the name of God who had Just been evoked by the sacrifice, they must swear that no neglect upon their part occasioned the death of that man. That is called municipal responsibility. Now, when the sheriff was killed in Fort Worth by that saloonkeeper, simply because the sheriff was discharging his duty, I wrote an article holding the city of Fort Worth responsible for that murder. They were tolerating the death-gendering business, also associated with murder, and through their licensing those saloons, and through their failure to enforce the law against those saloons that this murder came by, the municipality was guilty in the sight of God.
(7) The special Mosaic legislation, under the head, “Thou shalt not kill,” is all embodied in what is called lex talionis. You will not forget that: lex talionis , law of retaliation, and that lex talionis is set forth in the scripture, Exo 21:23-25 . Let us read that and see what it is: “But if any harm follow, then thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe” that is, every man under the law, “Thou shalt not kill,” is to be held responsible for the amount of damage which he inflicts, whether it kills or not. If he knocks out a man’s eye, then eye for eye, and tooth for tooth, one of his must now be taken out; if he cuts off a man’s nose then off comes his; if he breaks three or four teeth, then the same number of his shall be broken; “eye for eye, tooth for tooth, burning for burning.” If he picks up boiling hot water and throws it over him, then he must be scalded. Let us see how that law is applied in Lev 24:19-21 : “And if a man cause a blemish in his neighbour; as he hath done, so shall it be done to him: breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; as he hath caused a blemish in a man, so shall it be rendered unto him. And he that killeth a beast shall make it good; and he that killeth a man shall be put to death.” And now let us look at the lex talionis in Deu 19:18-21 : “And the judges shall make diligent inquisition; and, behold, if the witness be a false witness, and have testified falsely against his brother; then shall ye do unto him, as he had thought to do unto his brother . . . And thine eyes shall not pity; life shall go for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.” That is lex talionis . Now, so far as we have considered the case of homicide where it was adjudged to be murder, and the penalty was death.
We will now consider accidental homicide. Deu 19:4-6 : “And this is the case of the manslayer, that shall flee thither and live: whoso killeth his neighbor unawares, and hateth him not in time past; as when a man goeth into the forest with his neighbor to hew wood, and his hand fetcheth a stroke with the axe to cut down the tree, and the head slippeth from the helve, and lighteth upon his neighbor, so that he dieth; he shall flee unto one of these cities and live: lest the avenger of blood pursue the manslayer, while his heart is hot, and overtake him, because the way is long, and smite him mortally; whereas he was not worthy of death, inasmuch as he hated him not in time past.” Now, he killed him but there was no hatred toward him and no intention to kill him. It was a pure accident; that is not murder.
I take a still stronger case, however, presented in Num 35:22-23 : “But if he thrust him suddenly without enmity, or buried upon him anything without lying in wait, or with any stone, whereby a man may die, seeing him not, and cast it upon him, so that he died, and he was not his enemy, neither sought his harm”; then that is not murder, for the congregation delivered the manslayer out of the hand of the avenger of blood and restored him to his city of refuge whither he had fled. There you come upon both suddenly, and it would be such if I were working on the top of a three-story house and pushed off the coping and it fell on somebody and killed him, I not seeing him, yet there being a sign up all around that there was danger on that building. But there was something here more than that. It says, “If a man suddenly thrust.” Now that is not an accident; it is this kind of a case: if the killing is brought upon you when you are not expecting it and the whole issue of it is thrust upon you without any premeditation on your part, and in the heat of the moment, you, in defense, lay hold on anything you can get your hand on, when they are crowding you, and you thrust suddenly and kill a man, this is not murder. Why? There was no malice, and there was no deliberation. It all came upon you in a moment, and you find that principle recognized in every law court in the United States. A question comes up: “Was the lex talionis to be enforced individually or through the courts?” I will explain that directly, we will come to it again, a strange kind of court, a part of it, yet it was a court.
6. Now give the Mosaic definition of murder, the process of court procedure in determining it to be murder, and its penalty.
Ans. Here’s my answer: (1) Homicide with deliberation and enmity is always murder. (2) The use of a deadly weapon in smiting implies malice and intent to kill and is murder. (3) Taking a bribe to kill, though without personal malice, is murder. (4) Homicide resulting from perjury, without personal malice, is murder. (5) Extreme punishment of the slave, though one did not mean to murder when he commenced punishing him, yet if he persisted until the slave dies under that punishment, it is murder. (6) Homicide resulting from criminal negligence, as in the case of an ox, or of the battlement. (7) In the case of a fight on the streets or in the house where the public have a right to be; (8) as in the case of the municipality in not safeguarding the lives of the citizens, or in not enforcing the law which does safeguard these, all are murder, criminal and otherwise at special courts; and (Deu 19:15-19 ) every man (a) was entitled to a trial, (b) and no man could be convicted of any offense, and especially in that of murder, by one witness; there must be two witnesses, one would not do; (c) no bail could be given, and (d) no fine allowed in a murder case, (e) and a false witness was himself to be put to death. (I will explain another feature of the court at the end of the chapter.) Now continuing the Mosaic definition: (9) Accidental (Deu 19:4-6 ) homicide in self-defense is not murder. (10) Sudden homicide is not murder (Num 35 ). (II) When a thief in the act of burglary is killed, that is not murder. (12) But, if you wait to kill him till the next day, then it is murder. (13) War is not murder; killing in war is not murder. Now I have given you the Mosaic law for murder.
7. What was our Lord’s exposition on this Sixth Commandments?
Ans. It is in Mat 5:21-22 , in the great Sermon on the Mount: “Ye have heard that it was said to them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: but I say unto you, that every one who is angry with his brother shall be in danger of the judgments; and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca [an expression of contempt], shall be in danger of the council [the Sanhedrin]; and whosoever shall say, Thou goal [an expression of condemnation] shall be in danger of the Gehenna of fire.” There you see our Lord goes down to the root of the matter, and he puts the murder not in the overt act, but in the angry passion, or hate, that prompts the act, and that passion or hate may be expressed in a word. You may kill with the word, Raca, Fool, a worthless fellow; so that our Lord does not take back the Mosaic law, but he gives the spirit of it; he goes deeper than the words of the law; fool [an expression of condemnation], shall be in danger of the Gehenna of fire.” There you see our Lord goes down to the root of the matter, and he puts the murder not in the overt but in the state of the mind which prompts to kill or to call a man curse words, as Raca, Fool, or whatever you please.
8. Now give our Lord’s exposition of the lex talionis.
Ans. In Mat 5:38-39 , we have this: “Ye have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth [he does not take that back; he goes far beyond that] : but I say unto you, Resist not him that is evil; but whosoever smiteth thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.” That is, the Christian man is not allowed to be executor of the lex talionis; he is not judge, or sheriff. The law says, “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” and if a man has knocked your eye out, you are not to reach out your hand and knock his out; you are not the executor if he hits you on one side of the face. Rather than hit him back, you had better turn the other side and let him hit you again. God did not make you executor of the law.
9. What is John’s exposition of murder?
Ans. 1Jn 3:15 : “Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer.” He may not shoot him; he may not be guilty of assassination, but if he hates him he has the spirit of a murderer.
10. Now give our Lord’s exposition of the source of murder.
Ans. Here he goes deeper than he went before. There he put the murder in the passions; in Mat 15:19 , he gives the source of it: “For out of the heart come forth evil thoughts, murders, etc.” There you do not have to prove the murder to be of the sword or pistol, nor even by anger, whether it manifests itself or not in word or gesture, but the permanent state, the attitude of the inner self toward God; out of the heart it comes forth, and that is the source.
11. Now give our Lord’s positive side of the commandment, the negative side of it being, “Thou shalt not kill.”
Ans. In Mat 5:43-45 , we find his positive side of it: “Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour and hate thine enemy; but I say unto you, Love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you; that ye may be sons of your Father who is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust.” As murder is hate “Thou shalt not hate” (that is the negative side) so, “Thou shalt love” is the positive of the commandment.
12. What is Paul’s positive side of it?
Ans. Rom 12:19-21 : “Avenge not yourselves, beloved, but give place unto the wrath of God: for it is written, Vengeance belongeth unto me; I will recompense, saith the Lord. But if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him to drink; for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.” There you begin to get at the idea that Christ is not speaking of the governmental execution of law. He is saying to the Christian people that they are not the executors of the law; and Paul says, “You have been wronged, now you give place to the wrath of God; just get out of the way and let God hit him. ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, I will repay,’ and so far as you are concerned, do not hit him. Love him and pray for him.”
13. Does our Lord condemn all anger? If not, what is his law of anger?
Ans. As a proof that he does not condemn all anger, three or four times in his life he was himself intensely indignant, and ought to have been, and we ought to have an anger and wrath against any and all evil things, but he says, “Let not the sun go down on your wrath.” Now if they are wicked things they will make you mad, and that would not be sin, but if you took vengeance it would be sin, or if you nourished that, let the sun go down on that anger, it would breed something that would be sin, i.e., if you let it hang on long.
14. Does Christ condemn killing by the state through the courts of justice?
Ans. He certainly does not. He is not discussing that subject at all; nobody could call him out on these political questions.
15. What, then, is the sum of his teaching on killing and private resistance?
Ans. The sum of his teaching is that as God sends his sunlight and his rain upon the evil and good alike, so we, to be the children of God, must love the good and the bad; must desire their good; must refuse to execute judgment on him by taking vengeance into our hands. That is the sum of his law.
16. What is the sum of his teaching on courts and wars?
Ans. As I have told you, he avoided putting himself in antagonism in any way to any form of government. He says in whatsoever condition you are to be content, and you are to obey the magistrates and observe the requirements issued for the good of society. But he teaches principles that will ultimately put an end to the necessity of the human courts and to all courts whatever. One of the prophets says, “He shall be the arbiter between nations.” He says to his own children, “Do not go to law brother against brother.” We should either arbitrate or select any two or three good brethren in the church and let them decide; suffer wrong rather than go to law. He established the great principle of arbitration which appears in The Hague Commission and which has done a great deal of good and gives expression to the principle which he teaches, as the prophets declare: That the lion and the lamb shall lie down together, and a little child shall lead them, and there shall be wars no more, and the swords shall be turned into plowshares and the spears into pruning hooks, and from one end of the earth to the other there shall be peace, and peace only. He is to bring it about, not by political legislation, but by inculcating the principles that will govern public opinion and will spread until a millennium of glory shall come in the power of his teachings.
17. What is the nature of murder?
Ans. It has about a dozen elements: (1) Sacrilege, because you are killing somebody who was made in the image of God; that is sacrilege. (2) And again you are killing your brother; you are destroying a member of society, and the great reason for a legislation against murder is that the man is made in the image of God, etc.
18. Cite special cases of murder.
Ans. (1) Homicide, the killing of a man; (2) suicide, the killing of self; (3) parricide, the killing of a parent; (4) infanticide, the killing of infants; and feticide, the killing of unborn children. Every one of them is murder.
19. Give the case of the Negro judge.
Ans. In Reconstruction times some Negroes got into office, and very near the edge of Arkansas, close to Texas, a Negro became a judge, and one of the cases brought before him was that of a man who had killed another man and stolen his horse. When they brought him before the Negro, he said: ”This court knows two kinds of justice; there is the Arkansas justice and there is the Texas justice. Well, now, which will you have?” “Well, if it is Texas justice you want, I set you free for killing the man that is nothing in Texas, but I will hang you for stealing the horse.” “Well, hold on,” the culprit said, “give me Arkansas justice.” “All right, I’ll set you free for stealing that horse, but I’ll hang you for killing that man.”
20. What is the great reflection on our laws as they are administered?
Ans. That the courts will not condemn a man for murder; they just simply will not do it. They condemn to death for stealing, without ever failing, and for a great many other things, but you can come nearer killing a man with impunity than stealing a paper bag of popcorn.
21. What is one of the greatest causes that lead to murder?
Ans. The love of money; as in the case of that man who killed by taking a bribe; as in the case of that man who swore falsely for money’s sake; as in the case of that saloonkeeper, who for the love of money kept and sold the things that brought about murder. The love of money is one of the greatest causes of murder.
22. Explain the avenger of blood and the cities of refuge.
Ans. The question was asked whether the lex talionis was vested in that individual or in the court of the cities of refuge. There were six of them, three east of the Jordan and three west; they were set there for this purpose: that when one killed a man, he could instantly flee that city nearest, and if the avenger of blood overtook him before he got there, he perished; if he got there, he had a trial. If it was proved that he had maliciously killed him, then the city of refuge could not hold him, nobody could hold him, he must be given up, says Moses. But the object of those cities of refuge was to give time for passion to cool, to give time for a fair trial. Now what was the avenger of blood? He was the closest of kin to the murdered man. That looks like putting it into the hands of the individual, but while it was in the hands of the individual, it was an individual commission of the law; the law commissioned him, as soon as his kinsman was killed, to strike right out for the murderer, and it was a hot race; if the murderer got to the city of refuge he was safe from the avenger of blood until the evidence could be brought there and the case tried, and if he had actually committed murder, then he must be publicly executed. If it was a case of accidental killing, or accidental homicide, they could not put him to death. Now we have no such thing as the avenger of blood, making the nearest of kin the avenger of blood, as the law of Moses did. But he was an officer of the law just as the sheriff is. The Mormons created a body called the Danites, a secret organization, and made them the avengers of blood, until the whole United States was stirred with the drama, The Danites repeating what they did in dramatic art. That drama, The Danites, thrilled the whole United States, and the Danites had to go out of business.
23. How about a missionary in a heathen country carrying a pistol?
Ans. If I had been out with Theodore Roosevelt in the wilds of Africa, I would have carried both gun and pistols. Wherever my life was in jeopardy by the necessity of my situation, I would carry them, but in a school or a church, or in the streets of a peaceful city, where there are officers of the law on all sides ready to protect that is the kind of pistol carrying that is inexcusable.
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
Exo 20:13 Thou shalt not kill.
Ver. 13. Thou shalt not kill. ] A crying sin. Gen 4:8-26 ; Gen 4:24 For the which God makes inquisition, Psa 9:12 and strangely brings it to light. It was a saying of King James, that if God did allow him to kill a man, he would think God did not love him. See Trapp (for summary of Law) on “ Exo 20:17 “
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Exo 21:14, Exo 21:20, Exo 21:29, Gen 4:8-23, Gen 9:5, Gen 9:6, Lev 24:21, Num 35:16-34, Deu 5:17, Deu 19:11-13, 2Sa 12:9, 2Sa 12:10, 2Ki 21:16, 2Ch 24:22, Psa 10:8-11, Pro 1:11, Pro 1:18, Isa 26:21, Jer 26:15, Mat 5:21, Mat 5:22, Act 28:4, Rom 13:9, Gal 5:21, 1Ti 1:9, Jam 2:11, Jam 2:13, 1Jo 3:12-15
Reciprocal: Exo 21:12 – General Deu 27:24 – General Act 16:28 – Do
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Exo 20:13. Thou shalt not kill Thou shalt not do any thing hurtful to the health or life of thy own body, or any others. This doth not forbid our necessary defence, or the magistrates putting offenders to death; but it forbids all malice and hatred to any, for he that hateth his brother is a murderer, and all revenge arising therefrom; likewise anger, and hurt said or done, or aimed to be done, in a passion; of this our Saviour expounds this commandment, Mat 5:22.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
20:13 Thou shalt not {i} kill.
(i) But love and preserve your brother’s life.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
The sixth commandment 20:13
God did not forbid killing per se. He commanded capital punishment and some war. The Hebrew word used here specifies murder, not just killing. The Israelites were to execute murderers and others under the Mosaic Law. However, He prohibited taking a human life without divine authorization. This included suicide (cf. Joh 3:15). [Note: See J. P. Morgan, "The Morality of Suicide: Issues and Options," Bibliotheca Sacra 148:590 (April-June 1991):214-30.]
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT.
“Thou shalt do no murder.”– Exo 20:13.
We have now clearly passed to the consideration of man’s duty to his fellow-man, as a part of his duty to his Maker. It is no longer as holding a divinely appointed relation to us, but simply as he is a man, that we are bidden to respect his person, his family, his property, and his fair fame.
And the influence of the teaching of our Lord is felt in the very name which we all give to the second table of the law. We call it “our duty to our neighbour.” But we do not mean to imply that there lives on the surface of the globe one whom we are free to assault or to pillage. The obligation is universal, and the name we give it echoes the teaching of Him who said that no man can enter the sphere of our possible influence, even as a wounded creature in a swoon whom we may help, but he should thereupon become our neighbour. Or rather, we should become his; for while the question asked of Him was “Who is my neighbour?” (whom should I love?) Jesus reversed the problem when He asked in turn not To whom was the wounded man a neighbour? but Who was a neighbour unto him? (who loved him?)
Social ethics, then, have a religious sanction. It is the constant duty and effort of the Church of God to saturate the whole life of man, all his conduct and his thought, with a sense of sacredness; and as the world is for ever desecrating what is holy, so is religion for ever consecrating what is secular.
In these latter days men have thought it a proof of grace to separate religion from daily life. The Antinomian, who maintains that his orthodox beliefs or feelings absolve him from the obligations of morality, joins hands with the Italian brigand who hopes to be forgiven for cutting throats because he subsidises a priest. The enthusiast who insists that all sins, past and future, were forgiven him when he believed, approaches far nearer than he supposes to the fanatic of another creed, who thinks a formal confession and an external absolution sufficient to wash away sin. All of them hold the grand heresy that one may escape the penalties without being freed from the power of evil; that a life may be saved by grace without being penetrated by religion, and that it is not exactly accurate to say that Jesus saves His people from their sins.
It is scarcely wonderful, when some men thus refuse to morality the sanctions of religion, that others propose to teach morality how she may go without them. In spite of the experience of ages, which proves that human passions are only too ready to defy at once the penalties of both worlds, it is imagined that the microscope and the scalpel may supersede the Gospel as teachers of virtue; that the self-interest of a creature doomed to perish in a few years may prove more effectual to restrain than eternal hopes and fears; and that a scientific prudence may supply the place of holiness. It has never been so in the past. Not only Judaea, but Egypt, Greece, and Rome, were strong as long as they were righteous, and righteous as long as their morality was bound up in their religion. When they ceased to worship they ceased to be self-controlled, nor could the most urgent and manifest self-interest, nor all the resources of lofty philosophy, withhold them from the ruin which always accompanies or follows vice.
Is it certain that modern science will fare any better? So far from deepening our respect for human nature and for law, she is discovering vile origins for our most sacred institutions and our deepest instincts, and whispering strange means by which crime may work without detection and vice without penalty. Never was there a time when educated thought was more suggestive of contempt for one’s self and for one’s fellow-man, and of a prudent, sturdy, remorseless pursuit of self-interest, which may be very far indeed from virtuous. The next generation will eat the fruit of this teaching, as we reap what our fathers sowed. The theorist may be as pure as Epicurus. But the disciples will be as the Epicureans.
Is there anything in the modern conception of a man which bids me spare him, if his existence dooms me to poverty and I can quietly push him over a precipice? It is quite conceivable that I can prove, and very likely indeed that I can persuade myself, that the shortening of the life of one hard and grasping man may brighten the lives of hundreds. And my passions will simply laugh at the attempt to restrain me by arguing that great advantages result from the respect for human life upon the whole. Appetites, greeds, resentments do not regard their objects in this broad and colourless way; they grant the general proposition, but add that every rule has its exceptions. Something more is needed: something which can never be obtained except from a universal law, from the sanctity of all human lives as bearing eternal issues in their bosom, and from the certainty that He who gave the mandate will enforce it.
It is when we see in our fellow-man a divine creature of the Divine, made by God in His own image, marred and defaced by sin, but not beyond recovery, when his actions are regarded as wrought in the sight of a Judge Whose presence supersedes utterly the slightness, heat and inadequacy of our judgment and our vengeance, when his pure affections tell us of the love of God which passeth knowledge, when his errors affright us as dire and melancholy apostacies from a mighty calling, and when his death is solemn as the unveiling of unknown and unending destinies, then it is that we discern the sacredness of life, and the awful presumption of the deed which quenches it. It is when we realise that he is our brother, holding his place in the universe by the same tenure by which we hold our own, and dear to the same Father, that we understand how stern is the duty of repressing the first resentful movements within our breast which would even wish to crush him, because they are a rebellion against the Divine ordinance and against the Divine benevolence.
Is it asked, how can all this be reconciled with the lawfulness of capital punishment? The death penalty is frequent in the Mosaic code. But Scripture regards the judge as the minister and agent of God. The stern monotheism of the Old Testament “said, Ye are Gods,” to those who thus pronounced the behest of Heaven; and private vengeance becomes only more culpable when we reflect upon the high sanction and authority by which alone public justice presumes to act.
Now, all these considerations vanish together, when religion ceases to consecrate morality. The judgment of law differs from my own merely as I like it better, and as I am a party (perhaps unwillingly) to the general consent which creates it; he whom I would assail is doomed in any case to speedy and complete extinction; his longer life is possibly burdensome to himself and to society; and there exists no higher Being to resent my interference, or to measure out the existence which I think too protracted. It is clear that such a view of human life must prove fatal to its sacredness; and that its results would make themselves increasingly felt, as the awe wore away which old associations now inspire.