I don’t speak Hebrew but I’ve been told the original language is more like “thou shalt not murder”. That leaves a lot of wiggle room, but “thou shalt not kill” has problems as well—like it could be taken as mandating veganism.
In the end I don’t think it matters how the hairs are split—people are gonna interpret it to mean whatever they want it to mean.
The main arguments for wiggling around it are based on balancing multiple lives against one. There’s a ton of commentary that are basically trolley problem examples. So self-defense is ok, intent matters, etc. Very similar to how most Western legal codes (quite possibly more, I’m just less familiar) distinguish between manslaughter, murder in the moment, planned murder, etc.
Keep in mind it is a religious text, so it obviously also carves out a bunch of stuff around killing for the purpose of enforcing laws (capital punishment), warfare, etc.
I would not be surprised if there’s something in there about how it’s ok to kill people who tie their shoes the wrong way.
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That’s not the way people interpret it. The majority of religious extremism directly contradicts scriptures. This is still the justification used
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I don’t speak Hebrew but I’ve been told the original language is more like “thou shalt not murder”. That leaves a lot of wiggle room, but “thou shalt not kill” has problems as well—like it could be taken as mandating veganism.
In the end I don’t think it matters how the hairs are split—people are gonna interpret it to mean whatever they want it to mean.
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The Hebrew is לֹ֥֖א תִּֿרְצָֽ֖ח which in modern Hebrew translates as “Don’t murder”. It’s also the 6th, not the 1st.
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The main arguments for wiggling around it are based on balancing multiple lives against one. There’s a ton of commentary that are basically trolley problem examples. So self-defense is ok, intent matters, etc. Very similar to how most Western legal codes (quite possibly more, I’m just less familiar) distinguish between manslaughter, murder in the moment, planned murder, etc.
Keep in mind it is a religious text, so it obviously also carves out a bunch of stuff around killing for the purpose of enforcing laws (capital punishment), warfare, etc.
I would not be surprised if there’s something in there about how it’s ok to kill people who tie their shoes the wrong way.
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I hope you stay that way. I lost most of my faith in humanity at some point, and what little was left is gone after October 7th.