2307.—"Thou Shalt Not Kill."
Please harmonize Deut. 5:17 with other passages bearing on the same, especially where the Lord gives instruction that certain persons should be stoned to death. "Thou shalt not kill" is a command which the Lord brings to every individual soul. That is the duty of the individual. On the other hand, governments must have some way of protecting the lives and property of their subjects; and nearly all the governments on the face of the earth have decided that the taker of life shall be put to death, or the one who commits a crime tending to utterly subvert the government and by that means destroy many, should also suffer capital punishment. Sometimes these laws may have been too severe, doubtless many of them have. Now and then governments have thought best to abolish capital punishment. That is the case with some at the present time. The Lord saw fit in the government of Israel to say that certain things should be punished with death; in His own wisdom He saw that if certain crimes were allowed to be carried on, the whole nation would be destroyed by the influence of evil-doers. For instance, those who thought that His Sabbath was of no account transgressed the Sabbath; as a result of this the people went into idolatry, and idolatry meant the eternal destruction of many. In God's wisdom it is better that the one who subverts the whole nation should perish rather than that the nation should be destroyed. It was one of the laws that one who taught idolatry and who led the people away after other gods should suffer capital punishment. He desired that such cases should be examples to those who were younger, that they might turn from such demoralizing practises. Of course these commands of the Lord became dead letters in later ages, and His whole people went into idolatry, with the result that crimes of every kind came in. Some were destroyed even in the idolatrous ceremonies themselves, sacrificing to the sun-god and to Moloch, while every iniquity prevailed. It was to restrain evil-doers that these laws were given of the Lord, and for the same purpose that governments have enacted them; but it is ever the duty of the individual, "Thou shalt not kill."