Does 'you shall not kill' forbid all killing?
No — the sixth word uses a specific Hebrew verb for unlawful homicide, not killing in general, which is why most modern translations now render it 'you shall not murder.'
"You shall not murder" is the more accurate translation — and the difference between "kill" and "murder" matters enormously for understanding what the sixth word actually forbids.
The Hebrew verb at the heart of this command is רָצַח (ratsach). It is not the general Hebrew word for taking a life. Biblical Hebrew has several words for killing — הָרַג (harag) covers warfare and ordinary killing; שָׁחַט (shachat) is used for sacrificial slaughter; the hiphil form of מוּת (mut) covers judicial execution. The word ratsach is narrower than any of these. It specifically denotes unlawful human homicide — the kind of killing that requires legal adjudication.
You can see how precisely the Torah uses ratsach when you look at the cities of refuge in Numbers 35. The man who kills someone accidentally — he trips, his ax-head flies off, a neighbor dies — is still called a rotseach (the noun form of ratsach) and must flee to a city of refuge (Num 35:11). The word is broad enough to cover manslaughter, not just premeditated murder. But it never stretches to cover the soldier in battle, the priest at the altar, or the judge ordering an execution. Those acts are described with different Hebrew words entirely.
"You shall not commit unlawful homicide (lo tirtsach)." — Exodus 20:13
The command is two Hebrew words: לֹא תִּרְצָח (lo tirtsach). Two words. An entire legal framework — courts, degrees of guilt, cities of refuge, the difference between accident and malice — is implied by the choice of that one verb. "You shall not kill" collapses the precision. "You shall not murder" recovers it.
Jesus does not relax this precision — he intensifies it. In the Sermon on the Mount he quotes the same verb (φονεύσεις, G5407, the Greek translation of ratsach) and drives it inward: "But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother without cause will be liable to judgment" (Mat 5:21–22). The command reaches behind the act to the unjustified anger that precedes it. What the Hebrew legal term prohibited in the courtroom, Jesus extends to the heart.
This is worth sitting with. The sixth word is not pacifism — the Torah that contains it also commands Israel to wage war, execute murderers, and slaughter animals for sacrifice, all with different verbs. The sixth word is specifically about unlawful human homicide: taking a life outside the bounds that law and justice define. The community that keeps this command is one where human life is not cheap, where no private grievance justifies ending a neighbor's existence, where even accidental killing demands a reckoning.
And when Jesus presses the command inward, he is not adding something foreign to it. He is showing what the command was always after: not just hands that refrain from violence, but a heart that does not treat another person's life as disposable.
The full study on Exodus 20 examines all ten words in their original Hebrew, traces the commandment-order variation between the Hebrew and Greek manuscripts, and follows the second table's commands through their New Testament fulfillment.
What does 'you shall not covet' mean — and why did Paul single it out?
Coveting is the only one of the Ten Words that targets a desire rather than an act — it is the command you can break in a locked room — and Paul quoted it precisely because it proved that sin is an interior reality, not just a record of bad behavior.
Why are they called 'the Ten Words' and not 'the Ten Commandments'?
Scripture itself never calls them 'the Ten Commandments' — the Bible's own title is 'the Ten Words,' emphasizing that they are first a divine utterance before they are human obligations.
Why did the people beg Moses to speak instead of God — and what does that have to do with Jesus?
At Sinai, the people discovered that hearing God directly was more than they could survive — and their terrified plea for a human mediator is one the Old Testament records God himself approving and promising to answer.
Why does the Sabbath commandment have two different reasons in Exodus and Deuteronomy?
Exodus grounds the Sabbath in creation — God rested on the seventh day — while Deuteronomy grounds it in the Exodus from Egypt, and both rationales are deliberately preserved because the Sabbath is rooted in both the order of the world and the act of redemption.