Post by michelle on Jan 31, 2008 17:28:28 GMT -8
As I was reading 2 Samuel 20, I started to wonder about the commandment of "Thou shalt not kill/murder". I starting thinking about how it seemed that there were several apparent cases of murder in the OT.
The interpretation of murder as I understand it is basically the shedding of innocent blood or killing in a manner that is not considered one of the exceptions of killing (e.g. self defense, etc.) as they are listed in the OT. When I read about Sheba and how Joab's men went afer him to kill him, I wondered if this was something that would be murder in the eyes of God or if it would be "ok" because he was revolting against David (even though it doesn't say anything about David's life being in danger). Then it seemed like certainly the actual act of his own tribe cutting his head of would have to be murder, right? I'm still not sure I've sorted this all out, but one thing did become clearer to me.
I don't think anybody would disagree that there is a lot of death mentioned in the OT, some of it may seemed justified, some of it not. But I have to think that the Israelites of that day must have had a better understanding of the language of the commandments than we do and maybe that explains a lot. There are some sections that God tells people to wipe out a tribe, but there are also sections that there is killing with no command from God. I imagine that the Israelites were not breaking moral laws because they knew what "Thou shalt not kill" actually meant. Am I way off base here? Thoughts?
I know that there were also some obvious cases of flat out murder that would not be justified by God, but I'm curious about the iffy cases.
The interpretation of murder as I understand it is basically the shedding of innocent blood or killing in a manner that is not considered one of the exceptions of killing (e.g. self defense, etc.) as they are listed in the OT. When I read about Sheba and how Joab's men went afer him to kill him, I wondered if this was something that would be murder in the eyes of God or if it would be "ok" because he was revolting against David (even though it doesn't say anything about David's life being in danger). Then it seemed like certainly the actual act of his own tribe cutting his head of would have to be murder, right? I'm still not sure I've sorted this all out, but one thing did become clearer to me.
I don't think anybody would disagree that there is a lot of death mentioned in the OT, some of it may seemed justified, some of it not. But I have to think that the Israelites of that day must have had a better understanding of the language of the commandments than we do and maybe that explains a lot. There are some sections that God tells people to wipe out a tribe, but there are also sections that there is killing with no command from God. I imagine that the Israelites were not breaking moral laws because they knew what "Thou shalt not kill" actually meant. Am I way off base here? Thoughts?
I know that there were also some obvious cases of flat out murder that would not be justified by God, but I'm curious about the iffy cases.