Examination of the Commandment, Thou shalt not kill

The commandment not to kill appears at the midpoint of the decalogue, after commandments that describe how the Jews who followed Moses out of Egypt are to conceptualize God and relate to their superiors, notably God and their parents. This commandment describes how they are to relate to their fellow human beings. The commandments are described as the "'law': the moral, civil and ritual legislation by which [the Jews] were to become a holy people, in whom the promise of a Savior for all mankind would be fulfilled." Although it is unambiguous on its face, the biblical evidence of the Jews' experience before, during, and after the receipt of the commandment not to kill is that it is either violated in a sinful way or sidestepped in a way that is, apparently, not sinful in the eyes of God, but in both cases resulting in killing. The evidence of biblical and nonbiblical history informed by Exodus is also, from time to time, that killers find rationale for killing in the name of God. How, then, should the ethics of the commandment be un

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contemporary society, the most prominent issue fronts are capital punishment and abortion. But another contemporary ethical front arises that has resonance with the biblical era and area, notably in the persistent antagonism between Israel and the other peoples and countries of the region, owing to the existence of Israel as a state and the land that the state of Israel occupies. The general line of argument in favor of capital punishment is this: "The ideal of equal justice demands that justice be equally distributed, not that it be replaced by equality." It is argued that injustice lies not in the possibility of wrongful execution but in allowing capital criminals to escape punishment. The general line of argument against capital punishment is that society's moral outrage is not reason enough "to warrant the inference that [the criminal] and his conduct are appropriate objects of our unqualified hostility." This argument rejects the validity of government power over "moral bookkeeping," on the theory that in a free society the government should have less, not more power over its citizens, even criminals, many of whom lack the rational capacity to make moral judgments and deserve sympathy on that account. Basically, the anti-a
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Approximate Word count = 2713
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)