Thou shalt not kill/murder

Many people have read the sixth saying and concluded that it prohibited all killing. Such an interpretation misunderstands the Hebrew vocabulary—the Hebrew word used here is rāṣaḥ, and it is properly translated as “murder.” It therefore does not pertain to any other sort of killing, such as capital punishment, war, suicide, or killing of animals for food. All those are fully acceptable in Israel, even at times required, and therefore do not stand as contradictory to this saying or to the preservation of order in the covenant community of Israel. Even when Jesus extrapolates from the saying in the Sermon on the Mount in the Second Temple cognitive environment, he extends the meaning from murder to the prior attitude of hate (Mt 5:21). He does not expand the principle to apply it to other ways in which killing takes place.—Walton and Walton, The Lost World of the Torah, 255

<idle musing>
Well, that's the final excerpt from this book. On the whole, I found it a mixed bag. They do a good job of describing the cognitive environment of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible—at least prior to the Hellenistic period, when the ANE started to become more hellenized with the resulting change in legal systems.

But, diachronically, their approach doesn't fair as well. They definitely are wedded to the historical-critical paradigm, with all of its pluses and minuses. On the plus side is that they take the historical setting seriously, unlike so many other approaches. On the minus side, though, there seems to be a bit of tone deafness to historical theology, as a reviewer pointed out about all the Lost World series of books.

On the whole, though, I would still definitely recommend the book. There's a lot you can learn from it.

We'll start a new book tomorrow...
</idle musing>