by Petr Chylek (July 2026)
For over 3,000 years, we have had the Ten Commandments that were given to Moses at Mt. Sinai to guide our lives. The first five address behavior between humans and God, and the next five govern dealings among humans. The sixth commandment says, ‘You shall not kill,’ without any additional specification. The Hebrew three-letter verb root is R-TZ-CH, meaning to kill intentionally or unintentionally. In many publications over the past few decades, the commandment has been rendered as ‘You shall not murder.’ Did God change his mind and communicate His decision to a few experts tasked with the English translation of the original Hebrew?
This change sparked an endless dispute among both Jews and Christians. The Ten Commandments appear in the Hebrew Torah twice, in Exodus 20:13 and in Deuteronomy 5:17. In both cases, the Hebrew root R-TZ-CH is used. I have three Hebrew-English dictionaries, and all three specify the root R-TZ-CH as meaning to kill or to murder.
The Hebrew language has far fewer word roots than we have words in English. In English, we have separate verbs for unintentional killing and intentional killing (to murder), while in Hebrew, we have only one root that covers both.
The sixth commandment in Hebrew says LO T-R-TZ-CH. Here, LO stands for negation (not), T before the verb root indicates the second-person singular (you) in the future tense or imperative, and finally, the root R-TZ-CH indicates the action.
Some translators render this root as to kill, while others render it as to murder. For example, the King James Version translates the sixth commandment as ‘You shall not kill,’ whereas the New King James Version renders it as ‘You shall not murder.’
Similarly, the Stone edition of the Jewish Torah [1] reads ‘You shall not kill,’ while the Jewish Publication Society (JPS) edition [2] reads ‘You shall not murder.’ All this occurs without any justification for which of the two possibilities was chosen.
The pattern that emerges is that older translations use mostly the verb ‘not to kill,’ while more modern translations prefer ‘not to murder.’ Apparently, secular leaders realized that with modern war and the killing of millions, the command ‘Not to kill’ is too harsh. ‘Not to murder’ is more acceptable to our society. Modern translations on the internet claim that the current scholars follow ‘more precise scholarship’, whatever that means. They translate the Hebrew term specifically meaning an unlawful, intentional killing. It seems that someone is trying to plant in a new generation consciousness that the killing of other human beings is allowed, and only murder is prohibited. Were millions of soldiers killed in the World Wars, and additional thousands killed in smaller local wars, all allowed, and performed with the blessing of God?
It is clear that experts do not agree on the sixth commandment. Some committees have changed their opinions compared with earlier ones. Is modern translation influenced by political considerations? How can ordinary people decide what the real meaning is in the Torah? Is the prohibition against killing, against terminating life, or only against murder?
Rashi (1040-1105), the most often studied medieval commentator, says little about the problem [3]. Neither in Exodus nor in Deuteronomy does he make any specific comments on it. He essentially sees no problem with the sixth commandment. In Exodus, he encounters the Hebrew word R-TZ-CH twice, interpreting it once as ‘to kill’ and the second time as ‘to murder’, without any comment on the different translations. In Deuteronomy, the translation is simply ‘You shall not kill.’
In this case, when the Torah does not provide a clear answer to the question and experts disagree, we can use the prescription suggested by Maharal of Prague [4] in one of his writings [5]: If a verse has several possible interpretations, we have to read an appropriate verse as many times as there are different interpretations. In this case, we have to read the sixth commandment twice, once as ‘You shall not kill’ and again as ‘You shall not murder”. Read it twice. Read it aloud and listen to your voice. Whichever resonates with your soul, this one is correct for you.
However, there is another path to the solution of the problem. If we are familiar with the whole book of Torah, not only with the two sections describing the sixth commandment, we may use our knowledge from another section if it might help us to solve the puzzle. In this case we may use the parts of Torah dealing with refugee cities. Moses designated six refugee cities to which someone who killed another person unintentionally can escape to prevent the relatives of that person from carrying out revenge. The refugee cities are described in Deuteronomy 4:42 and in Numbers 35:11-31.
One who may escape to these cities and find a safe place to live there is again described by the root R-TZ-CH. The added clarification specifies that he committed R-TZ-CH unintentionally. Here, R-TZ-CH obviously cannot mean murder. Can you commit murder unintentionally? Obviously, R-TZ-CH here means to kill, not to murder.
To summarize, the Torah uses the root R-TZ-CH in the sixth commandment. The commandment simply means not to terminate life without any additional specification. Thus, from the commandment alone, we are not able to determine whether it prohibits killing or only murder. The Torah leaves us without a clue about what the writers of the Torah had in mind in the sixth commandment.
If we look at another part of the Torah where the same root appears, as in the case of the cities of refuge, we recognize that the root R-TZ-CH here means to kill. If the same meaning is assigned to R-TZ-CH in the sixth commandment, we have “You shall not kill.” It includes murder but is not limited to it. I conclude that the older translation ‘You shall not kill’ is more consistent with the spirit of the original Hebrew.
However, no English translation is “correct.” The Hebrew word has many meanings. The Torah has many meanings. Finally, the reader himself must choose which translation is best for him or her at a particular moment in his or her life. Shalom.
[1] N. Sherman, The Chumash, The Stone Edition, Mesorah Publications, Brooklyn, New York, 2005.
[2] Hebrew-English Tanakh, The Jewish Publication Society, The New JPS Translation, Philadelphia, 1999.
[3] Rashi, The Torah: with Rashi’s Commentary, Translated by Rabbi Y. I. Z. Herczeg, Mesorah Publications, Brooklyn, New York 2008.
[4] The real name of Maharal of Prague was Judah Loew ben Bezalel (1512-1607). He was a rabbi, philosopher, and kabbalist. He is credited with inventing the Golem. He was a rabbi in Mikulov (Moravia), Chief Rabbi of Poland, and, finally, at age 86, he became the Chief Rabbi of Prague.
[5] Moshe D. Kuhr, The Lion Cub of Prague, Devora Publishing, New York, Jerusalem, London, 2008.
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Petr Chylek is a theoretical physicist. He served as a professor of physics and atmospheric science at several universities in the US and Canada. He has authored more than 150 scientific publications. For his contributions to science, he was elected a Fellow of the Optical Society of America and the American Geophysical Union. In 2017, he received the international Van de Hulst Prize for his original contributions to the theory of electromagnetic scattering. He thanks his daughter, Lily A. Chylek, for her comments and recommendations on an earlier version of this article.
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