In Exodus 20:13 is written (in Hebrew, but not right to left): "lo tresah" (from "lo ratsach"). This literally translates as "not you shall murder," but we all know it as saying, "Thus shall not murder."
The Hebrew word "ratsach" is said by Strong's to be defined as "to murder, slay." According to the NAS Exhaustive Concordance, which lists all the translations for this word and its derivatives in the Holy Bible [Old Testament, obviously], this word has been translated to state: "killed (1), kills the manslayer (1), manslayer (18), murder (7), murdered (2), murderer (12), murderer shall be put (1), murderers (1), murders (1), put to death (1), slew (1)." [That is a total usage of 46.]
People these days love to get their panties in a wad and fret over a nuance, such that some argue that God commanded us not to "kill," rather than "murder." That brings up questions about whether or not it is okay for the military to kill in war. It also makes idiots argue against the death penalty because of this questionable meaning: murder or kill? People have obviously gotten so upset over the "kill" word being used on the History Channel that the Forged in Fire" guy that tests a weapon for its killing abilities has to say "keal" [as spelled in closed captioning]. They will not show these tests of weapons, made in a Hollywood forge, in the U.K. (according to an Internet thread about that), because (God knows) the f*ckin British have never, ever, gone around the world killing at will, which could be misconstrued as a Great Britain being behind one murderous empire. However, the clear intent is God told Moses to pass on the order: not you will murder.
In Genesis 4 we read about the brothers Cain and Abel. We read about the murder of Abel. Cain got angry and took measures upon himself and killed his brother in an act of malice. There was no Law at that time, but God punished Cain by banishment, hard labors and a mark that would identify him so no others on earth would try to kill him for being a murderer. That says human beings are readily prone to act more like Cain, than like Abel, so God made Cain clearly look like God had punished him, so all others keep clear.
What so many do-gooder Christians [many of them Anglican-leaned, who tend to forget how many heads of women Henry VIII ordered chopped off, simply because he was not pleased for whatever reason - exoneration being why he created his own church] tend to forget is God not only told Moses to pass along the commandment "not you shall murder," but a plethora of other laws that said the punishment for lawbreakers was to be "death." Specifically, Exodus 21:12-14 states: "Anyone who strikes a person with a fatal blow is to be put to death. However, if it is not done intentionally, but God lets it happen, they are to flee to a place I will designate. But if anyone schemes and kills someone deliberately, that person is to be taken from my altar and put to death."
Modern Americans have lost all touch with God, so they do not know if God approves one accidental killing or disapproves of a true murder. To get around that inability to talk with God, liberal lawmakers that call themselves Christians will allow some illegal immigrant murderer to go free, while pissing all over the parents of the one murdered. That one example can be seen as commonplace, since a Federal government allows anyone sentenced to death a lifetime of appeals, before some state government overturns the death penalty and changes all such condemned to life in prison (if not commuted or paroled before life naturally ends).
But, that is okay. It is human to kill. That excuses murders. I doubt anyone was ever charged or convicted for putting a knife in Julius Caesar. History says, "To the murderer goes the spoils" … or something like that. All that just points out the grand flaw in the American slaw, which is America is as Christian as was Cain. Neither was ever filled with God's Holy Spirit, so there is no reason for Americans to be governed by laws that even the Jews of America spit all over.
America is as heathen as heathen can be. Let all the Laws of Moses be broken by Americans, because none of the laws of Moses were given to Americans as a Covenant. God did not promise the land freely occupied by native peoples to be the rightful property of Americans, like God promised the land freely occupied by native peoples of a land once called Canaan to the Israelites. If God had made such a deal, then America would have lost its right to control the land, just as Israel lost its right by breaking its Covenant. If God had made a deal with America, then Americans would have been overrun by invaders for breaking its agreement, with God letting that happen. [Could that be a self-fulfilling prophecy that awaits America?]
The biggest secret that no one has ever figured out (not even the Hindus, although they have some hint) is you cannot kill a soul. A soul is eternal, it just is put back into a body of flesh over and over again, with the main reason for that reincarnation being a soul is like a grade school child that has to learn how to graduate (in stages) from human being and return to being one with God, as a spiritual being. In that long evolution a soul goes through, from body to body, some do such heinous things that causes them to also receive the mark of Cain (or the mark of the beast), so they dwell on earth in such miserable states of being that being in a body of flesh is hell on earth. Those souls should be viewed like high school drop outs or ghetto children that leave the educational process to become prostitutes - in a wide variety of ways those souls can been sold to Satan [sex, drugs, theft, murder, etc.]. The rest of the souls are simply trying to maintain until graduation, which always seems like an eternity away from being reality.
That is where religion comes in. Religions (in all kinds and sects) act like the school rules: Do this, don't do that, with punishments ranging from a paddling in the hall, to having to stay after school, to suspensions and expulsion altogether. Religions are like Mosaic Law, while not being Mosaic Law. Mosaic Law is only for God's chosen people [which does not mean Jews].
The ones who broke the Law of Moses were out in the wilderness, where survival and their safety was fully dependent on Moses connecting to God. To be cast out of that environment of safety would mean certain death. To be condemned to death for breaking a Law would be in essence avoiding the cruel and unusual death of dying of thirst and starvation after having been outcast. BUT … death only ended a body of flesh from having a soul. Death did not apply to a soul. All souls that were unworthy of being one of God's chosen people (based on a Cain-like selfishness that did as it pleased, regardless of laws) were killed, so they could reincarnate in some heathen clan, somewhere, which would be like failing a grade in school and having to start over again. No big whoop. Nothing more than lost time, and time only exists in the linear plane of life on earth.
If all those who were in some way or another, over the whole time since the Exodus, placed in a grand scale of progress, in a grade school sorting state, with departing Egypt being Kindergarten and becoming Jesus Christ reborn representing graduation from the twelfth grade, the vast majority of souls alive in human flesh today would range somewhere between the first grade and the second grade, with most everybody having long histories of failure. [Do your knuckles mysteriously feel bruised, like from ages of ruler whacks?]
Therein lies the true reason God sent His Son Jesus into the world. Jesus is the tutor that teaches each individual soul how to obey the Law. To understand this properly, you have to imagine God like a landowner with a huge invisible hand that sows His field with seed. The seed of God is Jesus. Jesus had to die so his hull of flesh could be shed, allowing his soul to become countless seeds sent to fertilize all the souls that love God and want to obey all His rules. Jesus the tutor has to be employed by the individual souls, which means a price has to be paid for that special educator coming to make one pass the courses and graduate from grade to grade, eventually earning a diploma to eternal life with God.
That leads to the grand caveat or the mega-reversal. It means killing oneself; but not suicide, where the flesh experiences death. It is figurative killing of self-ego, so one dies as a selfish student (juvenile) delinquent and is reborn as a lost soul that has merged with the Jesus tutor (Jesus Christ). This becomes a transfiguration, where one has married God and become His wife (souls have no sex organs) and that brings about the birth in one's flesh, so merged souls (student and tutor) become God's Son [souls are all deemed masculine, although that does not imply sex organs].
This means one needs to look back at what God told Moses His chosen children had to agree with. Exodus 20:13 goes from saying "Thou shall not kill" to saying "You shall kill or not be in agreement." It all depends on who is in charge of that mass of gray convolutions inside one's skull. If it is you ruling your world, then "You better not let your emotions get hold of you and make you murder." If it is Jesus Christ merged with you that is ruling your body of flesh, then "you are not because you decided thou shall kill self."
Can you see it?
R. T. Tippett