Exodus 20: 13, “Thou shalt not kill.”
The Lord gave life and the Lord controls life so no one else has the authority to kill. The Law at this point applies to killing people and not to killing animals as the Law also defines a sacrificial routine requiring the killing of sacrificial animals. This commandment follows on from the instructions that the Lord gave to Noah when he came out of the ark (see Gen 9: 1-6, “And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth. And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered. Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things. But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat. And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man’s brother will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.”) We learn that there can be lawful killing and unlawful killing. When a person takes another person’s life that person forfeits their own life. This is because a person who has little respect for another’s life doesn’t deserve to live. A relative had the right to avenge a killing but there were safeguards for a someone who accidentally killed another person (see Deut 19: 1-6, “When the LORD thy God hath cut off the nations, whose land the LORD thy God giveth thee, and thou succeedest them, and dwellest in their cities, and in their houses; Thou shalt separate three cities for thee in the midst of thy land, which the LORD thy God giveth thee to possess it. Thou shalt prepare thee a way, and divide the coasts of thy land, which the LORD thy God giveth thee to inherit, into three parts, that every slayer may flee thither. And this is the case of the slayer, which shall flee thither, that he may live: Whoso killeth his neighbour ignorantly, whom he hated not in time past; As when a man goeth into the wood with his neighbour to hew wood, and his hand fetcheth a stroke with the axe to cut down the tree, and the head slippeth from the helve, and lighteth upon his neighbour, that he die; he shall flee unto one of those cities, and live: Lest the avenger of the blood pursue the slayer, while his heart is hot, and overtake him, because the way is long, and slay him; whereas he was not worthy of death, inasmuch as he hated him not in time past.”)
(The view expressed in this blog are my own and should not be taken as inspired in any way.)
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