Different Life: 5th CommandmentChikamu

The Bible is filled with murder stories. The first is Cain and Abel. You’ll find it in Genesis 4. It’s a story about two brothers, each brings an offering to God. One is jealous of the other, and kills him. God sees and responds by saying, “What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground” (Gen 4:10 NIV). Still concerned for his own well-being over that of his murdered brother’s, Cain cries out to God because he’s now afraid that he’s at risk of getting murdered. Surprisingly, God puts a mark of protection on Cain to keep him from being killed. Cain deserved to die. God protected him.

The Old Testament scholar, Nahum Sarna, comments that all homicide is fratricide (“Exodus,” JPS Torah Commentary, 113). At some level, anyone we kill or hate or hold in contempt is our brother. We are all children of Adam and Eve. Sarna goes on to point out that the word “blood” in Gen 4:10, which is in the plural, has long been understood by rabbis to refer not only to the victim, Abel, but also to all his potential offspring doomed never to be born. As Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5 states: “Whoever takes a single life destroys thereby a whole world.”

Murder not only destroys the person murdered. It destroys all who would come thereafter. All who are connected. All to whom God would have blessed through this person bearing His image. It ripples far beyond what we could imagine.