Excerpted from With Liberty and Justice: The Fifty-Day Journey from Egypt to Sinai by Senator Joe Lieberman with Rabbi Ari D. Kahn, co-published by OU Press and Maggid Books
Day 23: The Sixth Commandment: “Do Not Murder”
In the preface to his volume on laws regarding murder, Maimonides describes the importance of the Sixth Commandment:
Although there are other sins that are more serious than murder, they do not present as serious a danger to society as murder does. Even idol worship – and needless to say, sexual sins or the violation of the Sabbath – are not considered as severe as murder, for these other sins involve man’s relationship with God, while murder also involves man’s relationship with his fellow man.
Whoever commits this sin is an utterly wicked person. All the mitzvot that he performs throughout his lifetime cannot outweigh this sin or save him from judgment. (Mishneh Torah,Hilkhot Rotze’aĥ UShemirat Nefesh 4:9)
Some biblical scholars suggest that the way in which the Ten Commandments are presented can help us better understand them. For example, as we saw earlier, the order of the commandments and the division into two groups of five teach us important lessons. Similarly, according to some rabbis, rather than reading each group of five from top to bottom, on each of the two tablets, the commandments should be read horizontally, across both tablets, and linked to each other this way. Thus, the First Commandment should be paired with the Sixth as below:
I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery / You shall not murder.
Murder is an egregious crime, as described by Maimonides, and self-evidently wrong, but what is the most significant reason why? When the First and Sixth Commandments are read as one sentence, the primary reason for the prohibition of murder is clear: “I am your God.” The reason human life is holy and murder is evil is because every human is created in the image of God.
This reading of the First and Sixth Commandments is supported by the verse in Genesis that first prohibits the spilling of blood, long before the injunction from Sinai: “Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God He made man” (Gen. 9:6).
Rabbi Soloveitchik brings a deeper perspective to the consequences of committing murder. He once suggested that the first line of the Shema be translated, “Hear O Israel, God (the Eternal) is our Lord, God is unique.” He felt that translating the word “eĥad” as “one,” as it is in most prayer books, misses the point. Of course, Judaism believes in one God. The declaration of the Shema, however, is intended to articulate the uniqueness of God. He is unlike anything in our experience. He is beyond our imagination.
According to this interpretation of Shema, we can say that just as God is unique, all human beings, created as they are in the divine image, reflect this uniqueness. To kill a human being is to deprive the world of that unique spark of the divine, the particular aspect of God embodied and expressed in that person. Every individual is irreplaceable, because each and every human is part of the mosaic of God’s image as it is revealed in this world. This must be what the sages meant when they taught that whoever kills one person destroys an entire world, and whoever saves one life saves an entire world.
This respect for every individual, which underlies the Ten Commandments, should be the foundation of any good legal system. And this sensitivity to the unique sanctity of every human being should inform the laws with which we strive to build just, humane, and moral societies.
