Law 3 of seven, a restraint
Do not murder
This is the law everyone already knows, which is exactly why it is worth reading slowly. The tradition does not ground it in social order or in the harm caused. It grounds it in what a human being is.
OneIn one sentence
A human life is not yours to take, because a human being is not a thing that belongs to anyone.
spilling of blood
שפיכות דמיםShefichus Damim
Literally the spilling of blood. The Hebrew does not use an abstract word for killing. It names the liquid and the ground it lands on.
TwoWhere it comes from
All seven laws are read out of a single verse spoken to the first human being. This one is found in the words עַל הָאָדָם al ha'adam, which mean to the man, in Bereishis 2:16.
The Talmud finds this law in the words al ha'adam, on the man, or to the man, in the verse spoken to the first human being.
שֹׁפֵךְ דַּם הָאָדָם בָּאָדָם דָּמוֹ יִשָּׁפֵךְ
shofech dam ha'adam ba'adam damo yishafech
Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed.
The Rambam counts this among the seven and rules that it binds every human being. His treatment of it in the same chapter reaches beyond the obvious case to killing by indirect means and to a life taken to save another.
Cited: Bereishis 2:16; Sanhedrin 56b; Rambam, Hilchos Melachim 9:1. Every reference on this site is listed in full, with its status, on the sources page.
ThreeWhat it actually asks of you
That you not take a human life.
Directly, by your hand, by your instruction, or by arranging the circumstance and standing back. The tradition treats the arrangement as seriously as the hand, because it knows how most killing is actually done.
That you not treat a person as a means to an end.
The verse says whoever sheds the blood of man, by man. It gives no further reason. There is no calculation offered in which a person becomes worth less, and the absence of the calculation is the point.
That you take your own life seriously as something entrusted.
The covenant after the flood states that G-d will require an accounting for human blood, and the Hebrew includes your own. If you are somewhere very dark, this law is on your side. Tell someone today. A local emergency number, a crisis line, or a person in the next room all count.
FourWhat it does not ask of you
It does not forbid self defence.
Defending your life, or the life of someone being attacked, is not what this law prohibits. The tradition treats standing by while a person is killed as its own failure.
It does not make every death a murder.
Accident, medical outcome, and the unavoidable are not the subject. The word the Hebrew uses is about spilling, an act, not about the fact that someone died.
It does not settle the hard medical cases from a distance.
End of life decisions, pregnancy where a mother's life is at risk, and triage are real questions with real rulings, and they are decided case by case by someone who knows the case. This site does not rule and cannot. Take those to a rabbi and to your doctor.
It does not turn you into a judge of others.
Enforcement is the seventh law's business, and the seventh law puts it in the hands of a court. This law puts something in your hands: not doing it.
FiveThe deeper layer
The deeper layer
Everything above is the plain law. What follows is the inner tradition's reading of it, and it never replaces what came first.
The Mishnah gives a reason for something strange in the account of creation: only one human being was made at the start. It teaches that a person was created alone so that no one could ever say to another, my father is greater than your father, and so that each person should say the world was created for my sake. In the same passage it states that whoever sustains a single soul is as one who has sustained an entire world.
That is not a compliment paid to humanity. It is a structural claim about what a single person is: not a member of a set, not an instance of a type, but a whole world, unrepeated, with a beginning that had no precedent.
Which is why the law is stated without a supporting argument. Any reason you could give for not killing a person is smaller than the person. A reason can be outweighed. This is why the sixth question the tradition asks about human life is not why is it wrong, but what is a human being.
SixOne practice this week
Put down the story you are carrying about one person.
Murder starts a long way back, in the slow work of making someone into a category. This week, take the one person you have most completely reduced to a type, and do one thing that treats them as unrepeated: ask them a real question, or say their name to yourself and remember one specific fact about their life.
SevenQuestions people ask
What about war, or a soldier?
The tradition distinguishes between murder and killing, and it has a body of law about war, defence and command that is far older than any modern state. It is not a question a web page can answer for your situation. If it is your situation, it deserves a rabbi and not a paragraph.
What about abortion?
Jewish law treats this seriously and its rulings for the seven laws are not identical to its rulings for Jews, and they turn on the specifics of the case, including danger to the mother. This site does not rule. If you are facing this, speak to a rabbi and to a doctor who knows you.
Does this law cover animals?
Not this one. The sixth law is the one that governs how a living creature is treated. Killing an animal for food is permitted in the covenant after the flood, and the sixth law is the limit placed on it in the very next line.
Is embarrassing someone in public really like killing them?
The Talmud says something very close to that, using the image of the blood draining from a face. It is a statement about the gravity of humiliation, and it is not a legal equivalence. Take it as the tradition weighing something you may have been treating as free.
This site does not rule on Jewish law and cannot answer a question about your own situation. The about page says how to find someone who can.
Where this sits
- 1Recognise the One G-d, and worship nothing else
- 2Treat the Name of G-d with reverence
- 3Do not murder
- 4Guard the boundaries of sex and family
- 5Do not steal
- 6Do not eat flesh torn from a living animal
- 7Establish courts of justice
Six restraints and one construction. Law seven is the only one that asks a society to build something, and the other six clear the ground it stands on.