God commands people not to kill, but then He commands them to kill. How is that not a contradiction?
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God’s Commandment was “You shall not murder.” (Exodus 20:13) This does not mean that you should not kill, just that you are not supposed to murder someone. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines murder as “the crime of unlawfully killing a person especially with malice aforethought” while to kill means “to deprive of life: cause the death of.”
Many people see these two words as the same thing, being interchangeable. This is why people think they see a contradiction in the Bible since God commands us to not murder, then commanding the Israelites to kill their enemies just a few chapters later. Essentially, people look at this as God changing His mind when it suits Him. Maybe an analogy would clear this up…
A man joins the military and during his tour of duty he comes across Osama Bin Laden. His Commander has informed him that Bin Laden is to be killed on sight because of his crimes against society. He pulls the trigger, following his orders, not rejoicing over the deed that had to be done to protect others. This is an example of killing someone, lawfully causing the death of another person.
Another man decides to join the Taliban and is told that he must fly a plane into the World Trade Center to defeat the infidels and please his god. He gladly hijacks the plane and has no remorse over the fact that he will be murdering thousands of people for his commander. This is considered murder because he is killing people unlawfully with malice.
Some people would argue that the newer translations have changed the Commandment from “kill” to “murder” in Exodus 20:13 to fix the contradiction. In a sense, this is true because the older translations misinterpreted the word for murder. The Greek New Testament quotes this Commandment as “You shall not murder” and being that there is a definite distinction between the two words in the Greek language, it shows that the Old Testament should have been interpreted as murder, not kill.
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