You would think that of all the ten commandments, the one that needs the least explaining is the sixth, because it seems so clear.

It is the one that the King James Bible, the most widely used English translation of the Bible, translates as thou shalt not kill.

Yet the truth is quite the opposite. This is probably the least well understood of the ten commandments.

The reason is that the Hebrew original does not say do not kill, it says do not murder.

Both Hebrew and English have two words for taking a life. One is kill, harag in Hebrew, and the other is murder, ratsach in Hebrew.

The difference between the two is enormous. Kill means one, taking any life, whether of a human being or an animal.

Two, taking a human life, deliberately or by accident. Three, taking a human life legally or illegally morally or immorally.

On the other hand, murder can only mean one thing, the illegal or immoral taking of a human life.

That's why we say I kill the mosquito, not I murdered a mosquito, and that's why we would say the worker was accidentally killed, not the worker was accidentally murdered.

So why did the King James translation of the Bible use the word kill rather than murder? Because 400 years ago when the translation was made, kill was synonymous with murder.

As a result, some people don't realize that English has changed since 1610, and therefore think that the ten commandments prohibits all killing.

But of course it doesn't. If the ten commandments for bad killing, we would all have to be vegetarians.

Killing animals would be prohibited, and we would all have to be pacifists since we could not kill even in self-defense.

However, you don't have to know how the English language is evolved in order to understand that the ten commandments could not have prohibited all killing.

The very same part of the Bible that contains the ten commandments, the five books of Moses, the Torah, as it is known by Jews, commands the death penalty for murder, allows killing in war, prescribes animal sacrifice, and allows eating meat.

A correct understanding of the commandment against murder is crucial, because while virtually every modern translation correctly translates the commandment as do not murder, many people cite the King James translation to justify two positions that have no biblical basis, opposition to capital punishment, and pacifism.

Regarding capital punishment in the Bible, the only law that appears in each one of the five books of Moses is that murderers be put to death.

Opponents of the death penalty are free to hold the view that all murderers should be allowed to live, but they are not free to cite the Bible to support their view.

Yet many do, and they always cite the commandment do not kill, but that as should now be abundantly clear is not what the commandment says, and it is therefore an invalid argument.

As regards pacifism, the belief that it is always wrong to kill a human being, again, anyone is free to hold this position as immoral as it may be, and what other word than immoral can one use to describe for the truth.

To describe forbidding the killing of someone who was in the process of murdering innocent men, women, and children in, let's say, a movie theater or a school.

But it is dishonest to cite the commandment against murder to justify pacifism.

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