Moses — "You shall not murder."
You shall not murder.
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Details
Exodus 20:13, one of the Ten Commandments given to Moses.
Date: c. 13th-15th century BCE (traditional dating)
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Understanding this quote
What it means
This command draws a firm moral line against taking another person's life. It distinguishes unlawful killing from permitted forms such as warfare, capital punishment, or self-defense, treating premeditated and wrongful homicide as a violation of the highest order. In modern terms, it asserts that every human life carries inherent worth, and deliberately ending one without justification is among the gravest wrongs a person can commit against another and the community.
Relevance to Moses
Moses delivered this as the sixth of the Ten Commandments received at Mount Sinai, foundational to the legal code he gave the Israelites after leading them out of Egyptian slavery. As both prophet and lawgiver, he shaped a covenant community from freed slaves, and prohibiting murder was essential to building a society bound by justice rather than the violence and oppression they had escaped under Pharaoh.
The era
In the ancient Near East, roughly the 13th century BCE, life was cheap and blood feuds, tribal vengeance, and arbitrary killing by rulers were common. Surrounding cultures had legal codes like Hammurabi's, but they often scaled penalties by social class. Moses's law applied murder's prohibition universally across the community, elevating human life as sacred regardless of status, a radical standard for a newly formed nation emerging from slavery into covenant identity.
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