Tag Archives: murder

Thou shalt not kill?

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Do not kill. Do no murder.

This commandment can be translated many ways. They word “kill” is often translated both ways; in other texts, when this word refers to one person, it is generally translated as “kill” but as “murder” when it refers to more than one victim.

And yet there were many commandments that come with the death penalty attached. Some infractions were punished by stoning. Others were to be punished by death but no specific method of execution was stipulated. There must have been a caste of executioners in ancient Israel, similar to the priesthood, but there is no record of them. (Just as there was a caste or guild of executioners in medieval Europe, these people would know the proper methods for killing and executing people as well as the rules governing when-where-how to execute as well as the disposal of the bodies of the executed, who were generally considered ineligible for burial in standard burial grounds.)

There were also the commands that Joshua, Saul, and other ancient leaders of Israel received to commit genocide: the complete extermination of people already living in certain areas, non-Israelites occupying territory that God was giving to Israel. Slaves could be killed by their master for almost any reason—or no reason—with no consequences for the master but if killed by someone else, the killer owed a fine to the master to sample up for his lost “property.”

“Murder” is clearly not the same as “killing.” Modern law distinguishes many kinds of homocide, including manslaughter, self-defense, various degrees of murder (involving how much planning and intention the perpetrator engaged in), and accidents.

Even killing in self-defense has been treated differently by differing Christian traditions. Latin-speaking Christians said that self-defense was justified and carried no penalty; this line of thought eventually led to the “just war” theory. Greek-speaking Christians said that even justified self-defense was a traumatic experience and a person needs to undergo a modified penance to process-deal-come to terms with the experience.

Medieval Christians also gendered killing and murder differently. Killing, a strategic behavior of soldiers, was a masculine act; murder, a spontaneous or vengeful or duplicitous act, was a feminine act. Men who murdered were considered less than “real men;” women, such as a queen, who led battles or engaged in military operations, were “manly women.”

Read more about capital punishment in the Old Testament here.

No Adultery? No Killing?

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A contemporary icon of Moses receiving the 10 Commandments on Mt. Sinai. Moses looks surprisingly spry and young, unlike the bushy-bearded, white-haired Charlton Heston in the movie depiction of this event! Moses is typically depicted as a young or middle-aged man with a very trim beard in icons, rather than as an unkempt senior citizen. This makes it easier to distinguish him from the prophets, who are usually depicted as older man with longer beards, like Elijah in the Transfiguration icon.

Don’t kill (or “murder”). Don’t commit adultery. Don’t steal.


These commandments in Exodus 20 are terse. Direct. To the point.
οὐ φονεύσεις
οὐ μοιχεύσεις
οὐ κλέψεις

Aren’t these obvious? We think we know what these mean. We all know about murder from watching police shows like “Law and Order.” Adultery means an unsanctioned sexual relationship with a married person. Don’t take what belongs to someone else. But these forbidden actions are not really as straightforward as we like to think.

For instance, “adultery” ( μοιχεύσεις ) is a very complicated concept. Nowadays, we think this means an affair between married people. But in classic biblical and canon law, when a married woman has an affair with someone, it is called “adultery.” When an unmarried woman has an affair, it is called “fornication.” The marital status of the man is never considered by biblical or canon law; when a man has an affair, he is guilty of fornication–whether he is married or not. That doesn’t sound fair to our modern ears but that’s the way biblical and canon law developed.

A second marriage can also be considered “adultery”–even if the first spouse is dead. It depends on whether the marriage is considered a contract (which expires when one partner dies) or a covenant (which never expires, even if one partner dies). Canon law in the Greek and Russian churches consider marriage a covenant; western Christians have generally considered marriage a contract. But not always.

If a first marriage ends in divorce, the second marriage can also be considered adultery unless one of the former partners asks a bishop to declare the first marriage “dead”–the relationship has died–or “null.” If the first marriage is declared null, that means the proper conditions for making the contract or the covenant were never fulfilled so there was no marriage in the first place and the first marriage is deemed to have been simply “legal fornication.”

Understanding who has–or has not–committed adultery can be a long, torturous process that can cause a lot of heartache. Israel’s worship of pagan gods is always called adultery by the prophets because Israel was said to be married to God. The worship of foreign gods also caused a lot of heartache among the Chosen People and resulted in wars, civil wars, exiles, and famines when God called the people back to fidelity with him. The Church is also considered the Bride of Christ and when we turn our backs on him and worship anything else–including our own opinions!–we are also committing a kind of adultery. But how many of us admit that?

What about murder or killing? Aren’t those straightforward legal concepts? Let’s look at those next week!

Unpaid Wages Cry to Heaven

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Cain kills Abel in the 12th-13th century Byzantine style mosaics of the cathedral in Monreale (Sicily).

Come now, you rich, weep and wail over your impending miseries. Your wealth has rotted away, your clothes have become moth-eaten, your gold and silver have corroded, and that corrosion will be a testimony against you; it will devour your flesh like fire. Behold, the wages you withheld from the workers who harvested your fields are crying aloud and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. (James 5:1-4)

Do these words sound familiar? So much early Christian preaching, so many of the Church Fathers, say the same thing in a variety of ways: the money and possessions of the rich have been stolen from the poor and should be returned to their rightful owners. The unpaid wages owed the workers cries to heaven as the blood of Abel cried out to God, demanding justice against his brother-killer Cain. By not paying their workers, the rich do as great an injustice to them as Cain perpetrated against his brother. Economic injustice is as great a crime as murder.

The stolen wealth of the rich will rot away and testify against them on Judgement Day, the epistle tells us. The fine clothes the rich wrap around themselves are already rotten shrouds falling away from the walking corpses of the rich.

Christian care for the poor was fundamental to the life of a Christian community. Julian the Apostate, the emperor who tried to revive pagan worship after the legalization of Christianity, famously complained, “… the impious Galileans [Christians] support not only their own poor but ours as well; all men see that our people [pagans] lack aid from us.” Christians cared for everyone, whatever their beliefs. Anyone in need was one of the least of Christ’s brethren and deserved the care of Christ’s Body, the Church.

Too many modern people do not realize how rich they are compared to the rest of the world. Too many modern people do not appreciate what they have stolen from the poor who are both next door and on the other side of the earth. I’m afraid that many people would repeat Julian’s complaint that the Christians put everyone else to shame in terms of caring for the poor. On Judgement Day, that will probably be the greatest indictment against contemporary Christians.

Read more about the blood of Abel crying out to heaven here. Read Takanori Inoue’s work on The Early Church’s Approach to the Poor in Society and Its Significance to the Church’s Social Engagement Today online here.