ANNOUNCER: Thou shalt not kill—one of the Ten Commandments. Is there any difference between killing and murdering? What does this commandment mean and what does it not mean? We’ll have a discussion about it today here on Grace in Focus, and we’re so glad that you are joining us, friend. This radio podcast presentation is a ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society. Our website is faithalone.org. We invite you to stop by and see all the articles that we have there on our website. Great for your research and reading. Just about any theological topic, especially Free Grace issues you’ll find there. Also, we’d love you to read our blogs. They come out regularly. They’re right there for you on our website. And don’t miss our YouTube short videos. YouTube, Grace Evangelical Society. Once again, our website, faithalone.org. 

Now with today’s discussion, here’s Bob Wilkin, along with David Renfro. 

BOB: So David, what question do we have here? It’s something about the tenth. No, it’s not the tenth commandment. It’s one of the ten. What commandment is “thou shalt not kill?” 

DAVID: I think It’s six or seven. 

BOB: All right. What is the commandment, “thou shalt not kill.” 

DAVID: Well, if you have the New King James version, it’ll say “you shall not murder.” But most translations will say, “thou shalt not kill” or “you shall not kill.” 

BOB: Why would the New King James translate it murder when most others translate it kill? Or here’s another question. What does it mean, thou shalt not kill? And what doesn’t it mean? Because don’t we have examples in the Old Testament where God tells the Israelites to wipe out all the men, women, and children like of the Canaanites? And we have other, for example, if someone killed your brother, you were allowed to go kill the manslayer, right? Unless they went to a city of refuge. And that wasn’t considered murder. That was justice, right? 

And capital punishment, you know, if someone committed adultery, they would stone the person in death. That wasn’t murder. That was justice. Isn’t it true that there are different Hebrew words for kill and murder. so that what God commanded people to do was not murder, but to kill. And killing was okay. But what wasn’t okay was murder. We would call it first degree murder, second degree murder. 

DAVID: Or murder one. 

BOB: Yeah, or manslaughter. 

DAVID: But I think manslaughter is a different thing than murder one. Well, sometimes manslaughter is unintended. I didn’t mean to kill the guy, kind of thing. 

BOB: Oh, right, involuntary manslaughter. But then there’s also voluntary manslaughter.

DAVID: Voluntary means, I’m going to kill that person because they irritate me or something like that, and that’s cold-blooded murder. 

BOB: Right, but if you didn’t intend it in advance, it wouldn’t be murder one. It’d be voluntary manslaughter over passion or something. 

DAVID: But so you just illustrated kind of what goes on in Hebrew too. We have more than one word for the killing of another person. We have murder, manslaughter.

BOB: Voluntary and involuntary. But we also have capital punishment, which is not considered murder. And we also have war. Like if you take a life in war, that’s not considered murder. 

DAVID: That’s not considered murder. 

BOB: If you take a life in self-defense, our judicial system, based on the Old Testament, allows for self-defense. 

DAVID: Right, and so technically, believe it or not, there’s different Hebrew words for all that. Like the one for murder is ratsach. It’s what? ratsach. 

BOB: Sounds like a ratatouille. ratsach. 

DAVID: Keep in mind my Hebrew has a Texas accent. 

BOB: It’s like Jeff Foxworthy [sic], Achmed, the dead terrorist, you know. What’s your name? Ach – med, how do you spell that? A, phlegm, M-E-D. And this was, what is it?DAVID: Well, that’s the one used in Exodus 20:13. You shall not murder, ratsach. ratsach. But that’s the word for murder, but there’s a different word for kill, harag, which is normal, oh, and so-and-so, killed. 

BOB: David killed Goliath. 

DAVID: Right, that kind of thing. 

BOB: That wasn’t wrong. 

DAVID: No, that was war. And so, but what I’m saying is- 

BOB: Actually, God told him to kill Goliath. 

DAVID: But see, he said, this word that’s used in Exodus 20:13 is never used in a military war situation, okay? So, when people say, well, the Bible says, don’t kill, therefore, I’m not gonna join the military, because that means I have to kill people. No, it’s a different situation. 

BOB: And they say, therefore, no capital punishment. 

DAVID: Yeah, same thing. And so, but that just proves, you cannot go all the way with English translations and come up with a whole philosophy based on an English translation, because the Hebrew, just like English, has different words for different contexts of taking a life. 

BOB: So, like when people say the God of the Old Testament was some evil or some cruel or God of wrath and the God of New Testament is the God of love, that’s a bunch of malarkey. Because the God of the Old Testament is the same God as the God of the New Testament, the God of the Old Testament was the God of love and mercy and grace. He allowed the Canaanites 400 years before their sins were filled up and He wouldn’t have taken their life. 

And remember when Jonah goes to Nineveh, and Jonah didn’t wanna go because he knew that God was merciful. Sure. And so, as a result, when he preaches to them and says, 40 days and it’s over, and then they all repent and God relents of what He did because they turned into their wicked ways. 

And so, in the Old Testament, you have the God of love and mercy and grace, and in the New Testament, we find out if you read the book of Revelation, he’s gonna wipe out evil. He’s gonna wipe about one half to two thirds, well, you’re probably know this better than I do, because you loved the book of Revelation. But what percentage of mankind is gonna die during the tribulation? Isn’t it like two thirds? 

DAVID: Yeah, pretty much. Between one half and three quarters of the population of the world will be killed. 

BOB: So, based on the current population of the world, somewhere between four and six billion people are gonna die if it were to occur now. 

DAVID: In a seven year period. 

BOB: In a seven year time period, yeah. 

ANNOUNCER: The Grace Evangelical Society’s recently published Old Testament Commentary, Volume One is now available. Find it at faithalone.org/store. It’s where you can also find Bob Wilkin’s latest book, The Gospel is Still Under Siege, as well as many other titles by Grace Evangelical Society authors. Please come by and have a look today. You’ll find the GES store at our website, faithalone.org. That’s faithalone.org/store. Now back to today’s topic.

DAVID: What’s interesting about this, too, is he said to Moses, the sin of the Canaanite is full. And that’s why He tells Moses, when you get to the land, you need to kill every man, woman, and child. It’s not because God is cruel. It’s because God is just. And if He did not judge sin, what kind of God is that? If He can call himself just. And so, He has to judge sin. And the Canaanites were, they were horrible people. They were incredibly pagan, rebellious against the Lord. I mean, Canaan was part of the genealogy, and then later on, Canaan was cursed in Genesis. But the Lord has, because of his justice, he has to judge sin, and intense sin is gonna result in intense judgment. 

BOB: Now, you do have, some people are bothered by the fact that I guess we all are, to some degree, that God not only killed all of the adults of the Canaanites, or of Sodom, or of Gomorrah, but everybody, all the people were killed, including women and children, including small children. A lot of people say, well, what’s up with that? Well, one of the things to realize is, later Scripture in the Old Testament makes it clear that the children are not punished for the sins of their parents, but each person bears their own guilt. 

So when the children are, like in Ezekiel, we find that in other things. So when the children die in Canaan, or in Sodom, or in Gomorrah, it’s not because of the sin of their parents per se, it’s because God is eliminating, or it’s certainly not because of their sin. It’s because God is eliminating that people group, and I believe it’s a mercy because there’s an age of accountability. And different people think it’s different ages. Some people say, well, it’s age 13, age 12, the point of bar mitzvah, a bat mitzvah. Some people would say that it’s the point at which someone’s able to believe in Christ for eternal life, which they would say varies from age five to age ten or four to ten, or whatever. 

I would say the age of accountability is 20, because of Kadesh Barnea, and all those who were under 20 got to go into the Promised Land, and the Promised Land is kind of a type of the coming kingdom. So those who got to go in were those under 20. So in my view, all the king knights who were under 20, and all those in Sodom and Gomorrah under 20 who died, will come back in the Millennium and live out their natural lives. Now, my view is not that they automatically get everlasting life because they died below the age of accountability. 

My view is they’ll come back, they’ll live out their normal life, but now they’re going to live it in the kingdom with Jesus on earth. With all the patriarchs on earth, the opportunity to come to faith in Christ is going to be terrific. So just think what a mercy it would be for these young children to be going from there to the millennial kingdom in a natural body, and then they’re able to have children, and they’re able to live, not 80 or 100 years, but 1,000 years. 

So I think when you talk about the “thou shalt not kill,” the command there is we are not to take a life without good cause. If there is good cause, it’s because God in His Word permits it or even commands it. 

DAVID: Well, but we cannot make up our own cause. We have to stay biblical in our point of view on this. 

BOB: Right, and in the New Testament economy, we don’t have cities or refuge, and we’re not allowed to take justice in our own hands and go kill the manslayer.

DAVID:It’s not our job.

BOB: We’re not allowed to go, if someone kills our brother or our child or our parent, we’re not allowed to take vengeance into our own hands. 

DAVID: No, that was a purely Israelite Old Testament law, which we are not under.

BOB: Right, it turns out nine of the ten commandments are repeated in the New Testament, but not the one about that you have to keep the Sabbath day because the Sabbath day was Saturday, and our worship day is the first day of the week. 

DAVID: The first, and didn’t that just happen that the disciples decided, if you read the Acts, oh, let’s just meet on the first day, not on Saturday. 

BOB: Yeah, that’s a good question. Why did they pick that, but in the book of Revelation, I think it’s 1:10 that he had a vision on the Lord’s Day. So the Lord’s Day is typically interpreted there to refer to the first day because Jesus rose in the first day of the week. So a lot of people think the reason the disciples picked the first day is because that was a remembrance of Jesus’ resurrection. 

DAVID: Yeah, and that makes a lot more sense than, hey, let’s do Sunday because it’s not Saturday. 

BOB: Well, thank you, David, and thank you all. And I hope you found these questions we’ve been talking about in the Old Testament helpful. Now, we’ve got a few more, but that’ll wait until the next time, and in the meantime, let’s all keep grace in focus. 

ANNOUNCER: Be sure to check out our daily blogs at faithalone.org. They are short and full of great teaching, just like what you’ve heard today. Find them at faithalone.org/resources/blog. We would love to hear from you. Maybe you’ve got a question, comment, or some feedback. If you do, please don’t hesitate to send us a message. Here’s our email address. It’s radio@faithalone.org. That’s radio@faithalone.org.

On our next episode: what did Samuel mean when he said God would make Saul a new man? Come back, join us again, and until then, let’s keep grace in focus.