You Shall Not Murder

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Overview

The commandment, You shall not murder, has different levels of meaning. Here are some of the things that are meant by murder:

  • Murdering or maiming a person’s body

  • Slandering a person’s good name or reputation

    • Character assassination

    • Backstabbing

  • Resentment

  • Anger, rage (the hateful kind of anger and rage, different from zeal, which is an expression of love, and which exists to guard, protect, and defend what is good)

  • Hatred

  • Revenge

  • Killing a person’s spirit

    • Taking experiences of heaven away from other people or yourself

    • Hurting people’s love of God or faith in God

    • Turning people away from God

  • Being rashly angry with God

  • Knowingly and willfully hating the Lord

Here are some other things that may be meant by murder:

  • Certain forms of depression

  • Passive-aggressiveness

  • Unkindness

    • Unkind intentions; unkind thoughts that you entertain, dwell on, and nurture; unkind words; unkind actions

  • Criticism

    • Being harshly critical of the good and true things that other people love, care about, feel, think, say, or do

Resource 1: Secrets of Heaven

Murder defined:

  • Murdering a person’s body

    • Killing a person’s body,

    • Thus depriving him or her of life in the world

  • Persecution

  • Slaying a companion in secret

  • Holding your neighbor in hatred

    • [Editorial note: Emanuel Swedenborg suggests that your “neighbor” is the person next door and also people in general. More specifically, your neighbor is any good, noble, or honorable qualities that exist in a person and help make them who they are, including yourself.]

    • Being angry with your “brother” rashly

      • [Editorial note: Emanuel Swedenborg suggests that a “brother” in Scripture refers to anyone—male or female—who is in good. Abstractly, “brother” refers to the goodness itself that is within the individual.]

    • Saying to your brother, “Raca!”

    • Saying, “You fool!”

  • Taking away spiritual life from anyone

    • Depriving your neighbor of spiritual life

    • Causing anyone to perish as to spiritual life, that is, the life of heaven

  • Depriving your neighbor of the truths and goods that belong to faith and goodwill, thus of spiritual life

    • For example, people who teach, and who, by means of their teaching, extinguish the truths of faith in those who are in simple goodness

      • Such people are pictured in Scripture as possessors of sheep who kill the sheep and do not hold themselves responsible.

    • Extinguishing the truths and goods of the church

    • Destroying what is good and true

    • Extinction of the good and truth that belong to faith and goodwill

    • Extinction of the spiritual and heavenly things in the Lord’s kingdom

    • Extinction of the divine things in the Lord

  • Depriving your neighbor of faith and goodwill

    • Causing anyone to perish as to spiritual life, which is the life of faith and of goodwill

    • Extinguishing faith and goodwill

    • Violence done to goodwill

  • Killing people as to their soul; thus depriving them of life in heaven

    • Murdering your neighbor’s soul

    • Killing souls that should not die,

      • And keeping souls alive that should not live

    • Taking a gift for killing the soul of innocent blood

  • Scripture:

    • A brother delivering up a brother to death

    • A father delivering up his children to death

    • Children rising up against parents and killing them

Qualifier:

  • People can extinguish what is good and true by means of immoderate zeal when they don’t know what the truth is.

 

Effects of murder on the person who commits it:

  • Delivered into tribulation

  • Killed

  • Deprived of spiritual life

  • With regard to knowledge:

    • Matters of knowledge having to do with truth and good...

      • Do not shine with their light.

      • Are no longer lit up by the light of heaven.

    • Truth is no longer seen.

    • They who understand what is true will nevertheless extinguish it.

    • Every truth of the church will wither.

    • Truth and an affection for it will be consumed.

    • Destruction of the truths of faith

  • With regard to faith:

    • A person is without faith.

    • Faith cannot arise.

    • Extinction of faith

  • With regard to what is good:

    • Good is no longer seen.

    • Good and an affection for it will be consumed.

    • Profanation of what is good

    • Vastation of what is good

    • Good that belong to faith is destroyed.

  • With regard to goodwill:

    • A person is without goodwill.

    • Goodwill cannot arise.

    • Extinction of goodwill

  • There is no longer faith because there is no goodwill.

  • The person will perish by reason of falsity.

  • The person will perish by reason of evil that is born of falsity.

    • Good that is born of truth will be perverted by evil that is born of falsity.

  • Truths that relate to good will perish by means of false teachings that come forth from evil.

  • The person will utterly extinguish innocence.

    • [Note: Innocence consists in being led by the Lord.]

  • Profanation of the Lord Jehovah

  • Love of the Lord cannot arise.

  • The person can no longer be regenerated, so long as he or she is caught up in the sin of murder.

Resource 2: The Apocalypse Explained

Earthly (literal) meaning:

  •  Destroying the bodily life of your brother

 

Broader earthly meaning:

  • To kill a person’s spirit, that is,...

    • To take away spiritual life

    • To take away the life of heaven

  • To hate

    • Hatred

      • Hatred breathes murder.

    • Deadly hatreds

      • These breathe slaughter.

  • Hating your neighbor

    • Hatred against your neighbor

    • Hatred against your “brother”

    • Wishing to kill

    • The will to kill

    • An endeavor to kill

  • Being inflamed with hatred...

    • Against all who do not make one with you

    • Against all who do not favor your love

    • Especially against those who oppose your lusts (i.e., self-centered or materialistic longings, desires, or cravings)

  • Hating your brother or neighbor, thus...

    • Defaming or slandering him or her, thus...

      • Killing his reputation

      • Killing her honor

      • Killing his life (his civil life) among his brethren

        • Destroying this life

      • When this is done from resentment, hatred, or revenge, it is murder.

  • Scripture:

    • Being angry with your brother rashly

    • Saying to your brother, “Raca!”

    • Saying, “You fool!”

  • Resentment, hatred, revenge

    • These things...

      • Breathe murder.

      • Will murder.

      • Are efforts toward murder.

  • Revenge

    • Deadly revenges

      • These breathe slaughter.

    • Loving revenge

    • Revenge breathes murder.

  • Hating the good of the church and its truth

 

Spiritual meaning:

  • Taking away from people their faith and love of God, thus…

    • Taking away their spiritual life.

    • This is murder itself.

  • Wishing or willing to take away people’s spiritual life

    • Being in hatred against them if you can’t take it away

    • Hating the faith and love that exist with them, thus…

      • Hating their person

  • Killing people’s essence, that is, goodness and truth

    • Destroying what is good and true

    • Destroying humanness (or the human essence) itself

 

The nature of all who are in hell and who therefore come into hell after death:

  • They are…

    • In hatred against the Lord.

    • In hatred against heaven.

    • In infernal hatred against all who are in what is good.

      • They attempt to destroy those who are in good.

      • This is deadly hatred.

    • Against what is good and true.

  • Hatred lies concealed in their spirits.

    • It is proportionate to the evil of their lives.

  • The main delight they feel is in doing what is evil.

    • This delight comes from hatred.

    • It is a delight in killing.

    • It is a fire.

      • It is a fire that burns with a lust for destroying souls.

    • It does not come from hatred against those whom they attempt to destroy, but from hatred against the Lord Himself.

  • They are eager to kill humanness (or the human essence) itself, which is goodness and truth from the Lord.

    • As they cannot kill the body they wish to kill the spirit, that is,

      • To take away spiritual life.

      • To take away the life of heaven.

Notes on hatred

  • Hatred is...

    • Infernal fire.

      • Infernal fire is nothing else than resentment, hatred, and revenge.

    • The fire of hell.

    • Manifested in anger.

  • Hatred is conceived of a [self-centered] love of self and of the world.

    • [Editorial note: Emanuel Swedenborg suggests that there is a good and healthy form of self-love, also a good and healthy form of love for the things of the world. He also suggests that if love for ourselves and love for the things of the world become more important to us than loving our neighbor and loving God/the Lord, these two forms of love tend to become selfish, self-centered, and hateful of others and the Lord. Most often, when Swedenborg talks about these two forms of love (which he refers to as “love of self” and “love of the world”) he is talking about the selfish forms of these loves. For purposes of this outline, then, the words “self-centered” are added, to make it clear that it is the selfish forms of these two loves that are being talked about, not the good and healthy forms. For a fuller explanation of this, see Sourcebook Section B, Assumption #4, There are four universal kinds (or levels) of love.]

    • Hatred lurks within this love of self and love of the world whenever they are not rewarded.

      • “The evil of this love of self is...

        • Hatred against the neighbor,

        • A resulting burning desire for revenge,

        • And a delight in cruelty.”

  • Hatred exists especially with those who are caught up in a [self-centered] love of ruling (or dominating) all people.

    • The root of hatred is this love of ruling over all.

 

Qualifiers

  • There is a seeming hatred and consequent anger with good people against what is evil.

    • This is not hatred, but an aversion to evil.

    • Neither is it anger but a zeal for what is good.

      • A heavenly fire lies concealed within this zeal.

  • Good people turn away from evil and are seemingly angry at their neighbor.

    • They do this in order to remove what is evil.

    • In this way they have positive regard for the neighbor’s good.

Resource 3: Principles of Life

Earthly (literal) meaning:

  • To will the murder of a person’s body in this world

  • Resentment of any kind

  • Hatred of any kind

    • To kindle with hatred

  • Revenge of any kind

    • To burn with revenge

  • To be rashly angry with your brother or neighbor

  • To hold him or her as an enemy

 

Spiritual meaning:

  • To will the murder of a person’s soul

  • Any method of killing and destroying people’s souls

 

Heavenly meaning:

  • To hate the Lord

  • To burn with anger against Him

  • To desire to blot out His name

  • To will the murder of the Lord

Resource 4: True Christianity

Earthly (literal) meaning:

  • To kill a person

  • To inflict any wound on a person from which he or she may die

  • To maim a person’s body

  • To inflict any deadly harm on a person’s name and reputation

 

Broader earthly meaning:

  • Resentment

  • Hatred

    • To be inflamed with hate

      • Hatred is murder.

  • Revenge

    • To burn with revenge

  • Notes on resentment, hatred, and revenge:

    • They are passions.

    • They are passions that breathe slaughter.

    • Murder lies concealed in them like fire in wood under ashes.

    • They are murder as it exists in a person’s intentions.

      • They are “murder in intention, not in act.”

    • They would break forth into act if a fear of the law or of retaliation and revenge were removed from them,

      • Especially if there is treachery or ferocity in the intention.

    • They are murder as it exists in a person’s will, that is,

      • They are the will to murder.

      • They are murder in its essence (or “essential” murder).

      • Note: Whatever belongs to a person’s intention belongs also to his or her will, thus it is the essence of the deed that is done.

    • Infernal fire is nothing else.

  • To be rashly angry with your brother

  • To say to your brother, “Raca!”

  • To say, “You fool!”

 

Spiritual meaning:

  • All methods of killing and destroying the souls of people; for example...

    • Turning people away from God, religion, and worship of the Divine

    • Inducing scandalous thoughts against these

    • Promoting beliefs that can cause aversion to them and even abhorrence of them

  • Destroying souls by means of falsities

  • Violating and prostituting the sanctities of the church

 

Heavenly meaning:

  • To be rashly angry with the Lord

  • To hate Him

  • To wish to blot out His name

    • In this way...

      • To crucify Him

      • To slay Him

 

The quality of every person’s own inner self, unless reformed by the Lord:

  • Note: This quality is apparent from the nature of the devils and satans in hell, which is as follows:

  • They have it constantly in mind to kill the Lord.

  • They cannot do this, so they want (“are in the effort”) to kill those who are devoted to the Lord.

  • They are not able to do this, so they make every effort to destroy their souls, that is...

    • To destroy faith and goodwill in them.

    • To destroy their “essence.”

      • They are in “essential” hatred and revenge.

  • There are cruelties in their hearts.

    • These cruelties sometimes appear like contests with angels and their slaughter and overthrow.

  • They are in wrath (extreme anger) and hatred against heaven.

  • They appear in the spiritual world like wild beasts.

    • When they see gentle animals they...

      • Rush upon them in fantasy.

      • Strive to tear them in pieces.

  • They appear like dragons standing near women with whom there are little children.

    • They attempt to devour the children.

  • They hate the Lord.

    • They are in hatred against the Lord.

  • They hate the Lord’s New Church.

    • They are in hatred against it.

    • [Editorial note: In the theological writings of Emanuel Swedenborg, “the New Church” does not refer to a church organization, but rather, to all people throughout the world who pattern their lives after genuine truths of religion. (See Emanuel Swedenborg, True Christianity, paragraph nos. 307-308. These paragraphs are outlined in the Begin a New Life Sourcebook under commandment #4, Honor Your Father and Your Mother, the last two subsections, titled, Heavenly meaning and Final notes.)]

  • They wish to destroy the Lord’s church.