"Thou shalt not kill" and war

I was asked to try to help, as a pastor, someone understand how the command "Thou shalt not kill" can be reconciled with the fact that the Old Testament is full of bloody conflict. I have not included the original question. Out of respect for the asker, but I wanted to post my answer in case some find it helpful.



The question that springs from the tension between the command not to kill and the obvious evidence in the Old Testament that people did indeed kill is not a new one, but it can still be troubling. It is a question that ought to be taken seriously and understood in its proper context. With that in mind, here is my attempt at a response and explanation.

The first thing we must do is remember that the tension between a command not to kill and the manifest practice of killing going uncondemned is not an issue that only impacts the Judeo-Christian tradition. It cuts just as deeply against contemporary American policy. On the most basic level, our community declares that killing is not allowed, that it is incompatible with a healthy society and must be punished. In several states, killing can be punished by death. That instance alone can raise the question, "If the government condemns killing, why does it then turn around and kill its members?"

On another level, we must consider how America (and other Western nations) approach the issue of war. In spite of a condemnation of killing, America continues to wage wars in which thousands of people die. There is little question that America applies one standard to violence committed within the community and another standard to violence committed from one community upon another. One is deemed inappropriate and unacceptable while the other is permitted, and seems to never end. Indeed, war causes our government to take people, who are otherwise forbidden to kill, and puts them in a position where they are not only allowed to kill, but are commanded to do so under threat of punishment.

Further, our legal system differentiates between various degrees of killing, not only between "murder" and "manslaughter," but also between various degrees within those categories. Even within the blanket condemnation of killing, there is allowance made for differences between cases. After all, one who is implicated in the accidental death of a friend should not be treated the same as one who has carefully premeditated murder and does so in cold blood. Those are different situations and must be dealt with accordingly.

If the fact that God condemns killing but allows war (note that, to my knowledge, nowhere does the Old Testament simply turn a blind eye to murder) is irreconcilable, then it it is equally irreconcilable that America does so. We must either admit that there is a crucial difference between murder and the killing that takes place in war, or else we must conclude that all soldiers who take lives are murderers and it would be better to allow our nation to be attacked with no defense. Few people, in my experience, are willing to take that latter option, though some do.

We must also be careful to take the Israelites in their context in the Ancient Near East. It is true that the Israelites fought many wars, it is also true that they invaded the territory of other people and were ordered to kill them and take their land. However, it must be noted that, when compared to the practices of other tribes and nations in the Ancient Near East, the Israelites were downright humane. It is true that there was much bloodshed, but there was also a tremendous respect for human life that was not shared by other nations (The surrounding nations practiced child sacrifice, for example). It is very easy to judge ancient Israel by standards that we subscribe to in contemporary America, but we should be careful in doing so, not only because we only comparatively recently came to hold such standards, but because, as already noted, we do not always behave consistently with them.

The Ten Commandments were originally preserved in the Hebrew language. Unfortunately, I do not know Hebrew, so I cannot provide a detailed study of the word used in the Ten Commandments for "kill." However, for what it is worth, I do know Greek and, when the Israelites translated the Old Testament into Greek in the centuries before Christ, the word used in the commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," is a word that means "murder" as distinct from killing more generally speaking. Many modern translations take this linguistic difference into account, translating the commandment, "Thou shalt not murder," which has a much different connotation than "Thou shalt not kill," as the former would allow for killing in battle and in self-defense, while the latter would seem to rule both of those out.

Ultimately, it seems to me that this issue is still contemporary. The only difference that I can see between the God of Israel condemning killing and yet allowing warfare and the American government doing so is that, when America wages war, it is merely a secular issue, merely political, whereas when ancient Israel (and, one could argue, modern Israel) wages war, it has a religious connotation to it. Actually, I do not think this separates the two examples all that much, not only because Israel's wars are only religious in the sense that Israel's self-understanding was that everything they did had religious implications, but also because America does not only sanction killing in self-defense, but engages in fighting around the world on the grounds that we perceive "evil" to be done and that we must fight for "good" (or "order" and "peace" if we wish to use non-moral terms).

I hope this sheds some light and is helpful for thinking through the Old Testament in particular, but faith in general. It is a difficult situation that does not seem to have a clear answer that everyone can agree on. It is my judgment that the real problem, that is more basic than the tension between a command not to kill and the waging of war, is the fact that we human beings continually put each other in positions that violence appears to be the best (if not the only) response. It is precisely this issue, that we are prone to violence, that Jesus came to address. When God became a human being, we killed him, but Christ was able to overcome even our violence. In spite of the brokenness of the world in which we live, God promises that this brokenness is not ultimate, that it will be done away with.