The problem in ranking suicide with murder, theft, adultery, bearing false witness and coveting one's neighbor's property-grouped together in the commandments and all forbidden-is that all those have evil intent, whereas suicide is usually an act of personal desperation. Note that this predates the ten commandments, and presumably has wider applicability-the commandments are meant for Jews alone, while this applies to anyone descended from Noah, i.e. "Man's brother" in the bible means just any other man (as in "brethren"), so the fact this is preceded by the phrase "at the hand of man" has been interpreted as "even one's own." It is a somewhat far-fetched interpretation. "And surely your blood of your lives will I require at the hand of every beast will I require it and at the hand of man, even at the hand of every man's brother, will I require the life of man." Traditional Judaism prohibits suicide, citing verse 5 in ch. I am no authority on religious law-do not even consider myself religious, in the old-fashioned sense-so all I can give you is quotes from writings of others and personal opinions. How does this relate to self murder, ie: suicide? Nowhere is suicide discussed in the bible and I found that odd. I was interested in the exact interpretation of the 6th commandment, " Thou shall not murder". I was reading the web site "Ekev:10 commandments" from 1977. What follows below is a correspondence conducted in November 2005, arising from 'Ekev': The 10 Commandments and the Tablets of the Law. Does "Thou Shalt not Murder" apply to Suicide? Does "Thou Shalt not Murder" apply to Suicide? David P.
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