Homicide

Homicide is the killing of one human being by another, and Scripture treats it chiefly under the prohibition quoted in Romans 13:9, "You shall not murder," which stands there alongside adultery, theft, and covetousness and is summed up in the command "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." As a matter of language, the English word homicide is broader than the commandment's wording, covering every killing of a person, including accidental and legally sanctioned ones, whereas the command cited in Romans 13:9 is directed at murder.

The text locates the act in the interior life. Matthew 15:19 and Mark 7:21 both place murders among the things that proceed "out of the heart," listed with evil thoughts, adulteries, sexual sins, thefts, false testimony, and blasphemies, so that the deed is presented as an outward expression of an inward condition rather than an isolated event. Paul classes murders among the "deeds of the flesh" (Galatians 5:19, 21) and warns that those who practice such things will not inherit God's Kingdom. Revelation 21:8 places murderers among those whose part is "the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death," and Revelation 22:15 lists them among those "outside" the city.

Set against this, Psalm 51 is a prayer for inward cleansing rather than for ritual compensation: the speaker confesses "I was born in iniquity. My mother conceived me in sin" (Psalm 51:5), asks "Create in me a clean heart, O God" (Psalm 51:10), and declares that God takes no pleasure in sacrifice but will not despise "a broken and contrite heart" (Psalm 51:16–17). Acts 7:60 records Stephen, as he dies under a lethal assault, praying "Lord, don't hold this sin against them," a prayer the text presents without comment on the killers' standing. One way to read these passages together is that Scripture treats bloodguilt as real and grave while directing its remedy toward the heart rather than toward external reparation alone.

Christian traditions read the scope of the prohibition differently. Some hold that "You shall not murder" bars only unjust killing, leaving room for war, capital punishment, or defense of others; others read the command and the New Testament's teaching on love of neighbor as excluding the intentional taking of human life in every form, including war and executions. Traditions also differ over whether the exclusion lists of Revelation 21:8 and 22:15 describe a final condition or a warning from which repentance, on the pattern of Psalm 51 and Stephen's prayer in Acts 7:60, remains possible.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.