Continuing our walk through the Oklahoma Ten Commandments, we come to number six: “Thou shalt not kill.”
Mermelstein takes aim
This is an overly broad translation of the original Hebrew (?? ????) which would be better rendered as “Do not murder” in English. I trust that those like Rabbi Mermelstein (pictured above) and other rabbis are far better at translating the Hebrew Scriptures than the scholars and Bishops of the Anglican, Catholic and Orthodox communions, who have relied on the Authorised Version, Vulgate, and Septuagint (translations contemporary with the initial formation of these now-mighty churches) for their preferred rendering of the Sixth Commandment.
For me, this is not primarily a matter of linguistic analysis but rather a simple matter of making sense of the Pentateuch as a whole. The Bible metes out capital punishment for breaking commandments 1, 2 & 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 (construed as kidnapping), it would be rather odd indeed to interpret the sixth commandment as a general proscription on taking life under any circumstances. Indeed, as we saw yesterday, whomever penned the so-called “Books of Moses” made it clear that God orders full-scale genocide on occasion, and at least once ordered a man to kill his only son. Probably not the best moral agent from whom to take advice on what counts as murder.
Exegetical nitpicks aside, I can wholeheartedly endorse this commandment as generally understood, and so my running tally now stands at two out of six.
