The Sixth Commandment
I was reading through Exodus today and came across the section where God presents Moses with the Ten Commandments. I’ve read this passage many times, but something interesting caught my eye. The NIV Bible I was using (Which I use the most) showed the Sixth Commandment as “You shall not murder”. This confused me, because since I was very little my family has had two stone tablets with the Ten Commandments enscribed on them; and I specifically remember the Sixth Commandment being written as “Thou shalt not kill”.
I decided to try another version, and opened up my King James Bible to Exodus 20:1-17. It showed the Sixth Commandment written as “Thou shalt not kill”. It surprised me that the KJV & NIV Bibles would have such a glaring contradication. The words ‘kill’ and ‘murder’, although sharing a common action that results in death, have VERY different meanings.
I believe that the NIV Bible has the most accurate translation for this verse. I could technically ‘kill’ someone if I accidentally crashed into another car while driving. Would this mean that I broke that Commandment? Since I had no intention of harming anyone, I don’t think so. On the other hand, if I were to intentionally ‘murder’ someone by stabbing them with a knife, I would have broken the Sixth Commandment severely.
Please share your thoughts!
September 29th, 2006 at 9:36 am
It’s definitely a word that means “murder”. The KJV is one of the worst translations to use when looking at individual words, aside from translations that are specifically paraphrase translations.
The KJV for it’s time was amazing, but in the last couple hundred years there has been a lot of progress in finding older manuscripts, and in discovering much more exact meanings of words. The KJV basically guessed in a lot of areas as to how a word should be translated, and they didn’t always get it right. That, and political pressure influenced some of the wording. Even to the point of adding entire chunks that they knew, even back then, weren’t found in original manuscripts. In modern translations, and even modern reprints of the KJV these sections are marked as “not being found in the oldest manuscripts”.
KJV – wonderful word flow, cadence, and very ‘memorizable’; lousy precision of translation.
September 29th, 2006 at 9:59 am
Sources for your argument would be nice.
Some of the word problems have to do with how the language has changed over the past several hundred years.
October 3rd, 2006 at 9:52 am
Sorry this is so lengthy. Long comments tend to annoy me, but it’s hard to avoid in this case. That, and this is a pet peave of mine.
The KJV translation has sections that were pulled from the Vulgate (the latin translation in use at the time) and translated back into Greek, so the translation trail went like this in some areas: greek -> latin -> greek -> english. There were also portions of scripture which were extracted from commentaries, and have been found to include a bit of commentary or have left a bit of scripture behind. Since then we’ve discovered actual texts from as early as 96 AD. There’s even a scrap of parchment that was probably penned by the Apostle John himself. The entire NT can be pieced together in its entirety from texts no later than 190 AD. The texts used by the KJV translation rarely went earlier than 800 AD, and most of them later than that.
Here are a couple of KJV problems. I know it sounds like a cop-out to claim “and there are too many other problems to go into them,” but that’s truly the case here.
KJV oopses and mistranslations
Heb 10:23 – “faith” should be “hope”.
Matt 23:24 – “at” should be “out”. (a typesetting error that hasn’t been corrected)
1 Cor 4:9 “appointed” should be “condemned”.
A few passages not appearing in any of the better Greek manuscripts:
Mt.6:13: “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever”
Luke 17:9: “I trow not”
Rom.8:1: “who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit”
Eph.3:14: “of our Lord Jesus Christ”
Heb.11:13: “and were persuaded of them”
1 Jn.5:7b-8a: “in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness in earth” (This one was added against the will of the compilers by political pressure)
A few passages left out of the KJV, that appear in the original manuscripts:
Mt.24:36: “nor the Son”
Acts 4:25: “by the Holy Spirit”
Rom. 8:28: This should read “And we know that God works all things together for good..” KJV leaves out “God.”
Language terms whose meanings have changed, not just “old” words.
1. 1 Pet. 2:9, etc.: “Peculiar” meant “chosen, or that which belongs to one person;” now it means “strange.”
2. 1 Thess. 4:15, etc.: “For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep.” Sounds like those who are alive at Christ’s return will not stop (prevent), or hinder those who are dead from meeting the Lord. However, “prevent,” in the 17th Century, meant to “precede.” See also Ps. 88:13, 119:147, Amos 9:10.
3. 2 Thess. 2:7, etc.: “For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way.” It seems to say that “he who allows will continue to allow, until he is taken out of the way.” However, in the 17th Century, “let” meant to “restrain”. This should read: “For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only he who now restrains will do so until he is taken out of the way.”
4. Acts 10:11: “..as it had been a great sheet knit at the four corners..” “Knit” should be “being let down…”(or “coming down”: Gk. katabai’non).
5. John 1:5: “Comprehend” meant “overcome.”