Kill
Ecclesiastes tells us that there is a time to kill. For everything there is a season ... a time to kill. Ecclesiastes 3:1-3 God commands us to kill certain people. Among these are witches, male homosexuals, non-virgin brides, blasphemers, sabbath breakers, and disobedient children. Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. Exodus 22:18 If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them. Leviticus 20:13 If any man take a wife, and go in unto her, and hate her ... and say, I took this woman, and when I came to her, I found her not a maid: Then shall the father of the damsel, and her mother, take and bring forth the tokens of the damsel's virginity unto the elders of the city ... But if ... the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel: Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die. Deuteronomy 22:13-21 He that blasphemeth the name of the LORD, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him. Leviticus 24:16 Ye shall keep the sabbath ... every one that defileth it shall surely be put to death. Exodus 31:14 If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; and they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die. Deuteronomy 21:18-21 And God often killed people himself (or told others to do it for him). Here are just a few of of God's killings in the Bible. I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth. ... And all flesh died that moved upon the earth. Genesis 7:4-21 At midnight the LORD smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon ... and there was a great cry in Egypt; for there was not a house where there was not one dead. Exodus 12:29-30 Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side ... and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbor. Exodus 32:27 And when the people complained, it displeased the Lord: and the Lord heard it; and his anger was kindled; and the fire of the Lord burnt among them, and consumed them that were in the uttermost parts of the camp. Numbers 11:1 And the people spake against God, and against Moses, Wherefore have ye brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? for there is no bread, neither is there any water; and our soul loatheth this light bread. And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died. Numbers 21:5-6 Thus saith the Lord of hosts ... go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare him not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass. 1 Samuel 15:2-3
Cited passages
For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
“You shall not allow a sorceress to live.
“ ‘If a man lies with a male, as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon themselves.
If any man takes a wife, and goes in to her, hates her, accuses her of shameful things, gives her a bad name, and says, “I took this woman, and when I came near to her, I didn’t find in her the tokens of virginity;” then the young lady’s father and mother shall take and bring the tokens of the young lady’s virginity to the elders of the city in the gate. The young lady’s father shall tell the elders, “I gave my daughter to this man as his wife, and he hates her. Behold, he has accused her of shameful things, saying, ‘I didn’t find in your daughter the tokens of virginity;’ and yet these are the tokens of my daughter’s virginity.” They shall spread the cloth before the elders of the city. The elders of that city shall take the man and chastise him. They shall fine him one hundred shekels of silver, and give them to the father of the young lady, because he has given a bad name to a virgin of Israel. She shall be his wife. He may not put her away all his days. But if this thing is true, that the tokens of virginity were not found in the young lady, then they shall bring out the young lady to the door of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death with stones, because she has done folly in Israel, to play the prostitute in her father’s house. So you shall remove the evil from among you.
Examining the tension
What follows is one scholar’s way of reading this disagreement — a critical-historical view that often concludes the texts genuinely disagree. It draws on the peer-reviewed sources listed below and stands as one position among the answers above, presented for transparency, not as GEBible’s position.
How critical scholarship weighs this: Genuinely disputed among scholars
This summarizes where critical scholarship tends to land on this tension — a report on the field’s center of gravity, not GEBible’s own ruling.
The entry juxtaposes 'thou shalt not kill' (Exod 20:13; Deut 5:17; reaffirmed by Jesus in Mark 10:19 and Luke 18:20) with the Torah's mandatory death penalties — for witches (Exod 22:18), male homosexual acts (Lev 20:13), non-virgin brides (Deut 22:20-21), blasphemers (Lev 24:16), Sabbath-breakers (Exod 31:14), and rebellious sons (Deut 21:18-21) — and with Yahweh's own commanded killings, climaxing in the herem of Amalek, 'slay both man and woman, infant and suckling' (1 Sam 15:2-3).
The primary apologetic move is lexical. The Hebrew verb in the sixth commandment is *ratsach*, which apologists (Archer, Copan) and translations such as the NASB and ESV render 'murder' — unlawful, illegitimate killing — rather than the broader *harag* ('to slay') or *hemit* ('to put to death'). On this reading the commandment never addressed judicial execution or divinely commanded warfare, which the same law code authorizes; there is no contradiction because 'do not commit *ratsach*' and 'execute the blasphemer' concern different acts. As a way of relieving the *surface* tension between the Decalogue and the death-penalty statutes, this is sound: ratsach is genuinely narrower than harag, and the legal corpus clearly distinguishes sanctioned from unsanctioned killing.
The lexical fix is less tidy than its defenders claim, however. Wilma Ann Bailey, in *'You Shall Not Kill' or 'You Shall Not Murder'?*, shows that *ratsach* is not confined to premeditated murder: it is the verb used for the accidental killer in Numbers 35:22-25 and for the avenger of blood who slays the manslayer in Numbers 35:27 — contexts in which 'murder' is the wrong gloss. The verb spans intentional homicide, manslaughter, and even judicially permitted killing of the manslayer, so its semantic range is wider and fuzzier than the clean 'murder-only' rendering requires. The commandment's precise scope is therefore already ambiguous before one reaches the harder problem.
That harder problem is not lexical but moral and theological, and the lexical solution relocates rather than resolves it. The same Yahweh who promulgates 'thou shalt not [ratsach]' also commands the executions and the herem. Reconciling these requires the principle that a direct divine command overrides the general prohibition — which functionally yields: do not kill, unless God commands it, in which case kill comprehensively, including 'infant and suckling.' Philip Jenkins's *Laying Down the Sword* and Eric Seibert's *The Violence of Scripture* engage exactly this, arguing that the herem texts cannot be neutralized by appeal to the sixth commandment's narrow verb. Susan Niditch's *War in the Hebrew Bible* situates the herem within an 'ideology of the ban' that treats total destruction as sacrificial devotion to the deity — a theology of killing in tension with the humanitarian strand of the Decalogue and the prohibition on slaying 'the innocent and righteous' (Exod 23:7). Critically, the Pentateuch preserves competing impulses: a Decalogue/covenant-law stream that restrains killing and protects the innocent, and a herem/judicial stream that mandates it. The Synoptic Jesus, when he enumerates the commandments to the rich man (Mark 10:19), cites the Decalogue stream and is silent on the herem.
So the entry is partly harmonizable and partly not. The apologetic lexical argument legitimately prevents Exodus 20:13 from formally contradicting the death-penalty laws — they are different verbs and different categories of act. But it does nothing to relieve the deeper inconsistency between a command that protects the innocent and a divine order to exterminate noncombatant infants; it merely shows that the contradiction is not a clumsy lexical one. The unresolved tension is between the two theologies of killing the Torah holds simultaneously.
Where the critical reading lands: lexically harmonizable at the surface (ratsach is narrower than harag), but the moral tension between the Decalogue's protection of the innocent and the commanded herem killings is genuine and unresolved.
Sources for this reading