What Does Deuteronomy 5:17 Mean?
You shall not kill.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Thou shalt not kill.THE KEY
The Hebrew root behind “kill” also appears for an accidental manslayer and for the avenger who kills him, so context, not the root alone, distinguishes murder from other homicide.
THE MEANING
This command meets you now as a boundary against murder. Its Hebrew verb also appears where a death is accidental or a killing is legally authorized, keeping circumstance visible within the language of homicide.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that this line classifies every human-caused death as the same act falls away: the same root appears in laws that distinguish accidental killing from murder.
THE ROOT
תִּרְצָח
tirṣāḥ
GROWS FROM
רצח
r-ṣ-ḥ
Rāṣaḥ means to slay or commit homicide; context identifies the circumstances and culpability.
The Hebrew verb is often rendered “murder,” but the same root also describes accidental homicide and a legally authorized killing. English “kill” can flatten these distinctions; the surrounding law makes them visible.
ALSO GROWS
rōṣēaḥ: Murderer or slayer; the person who kills.
רֹצֵחַ
This agent form appears in Numbers 35:16, showing the root names both the act and the person who commits it.
wə-rāṣaḥ: And he kills or slays; in Numbers 35:27 it describes the avenger of blood killing the manslayer outside the refuge city.
וְרָצַח
The same root can describe a killing authorized in that law, showing why the command’s scope depends on context as well as the word itself.
THE PATTERN
Scripture protects human life while distinguishing murder from other deaths and tracing violence into the heart.
Whoever pours out the blood of man, by man his blood shall be poured out, for in the shape of God he made man.Then you shall appoint for yourselves cities of escape, so that the crusher may flee there, the one who strikes a living soul by straying. And they shall be cities of escape for you from the blood-redeemer, so that the crusher does not die until he stands before the assembly for judgment.THE THREAD
And this is the word concerning the slayer who shall flee there, that he may live. Whoever strikes his neighbor by straying, not hating him from yesterday or the day before;“The slayer” is הָרֹצֵחַ (hā-rōṣēaḥ, “the slayer”), from the same root רצח (rāṣaḥ, “to slay or commit homicide”) as תִּרְצָח (tirṣāḥ, “you shall kill”) in the command. Here the refuge law applies that root to an unintended death, showing how context distinguishes the act.
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