THOU SHALT NOT KILL/MURDER

 Pastor:

Your sermon today dealt with, according to your numbering, the 5th Commandment (i.e., “You shall not murder.”) In recalling quite a discussion that arose during a Bible Study at St. Paul’s in Concordia, I began researching Exodus 20:13 in the Hebrew text. However, my confusion was compounded when I found the following:

(1) Exodus 20:13: לא תרצח (Lo tirtzach) “(You[sing.]) No murder”

and

‎(2) Exodus 20:13: רָצַח (ratsach) “to murder, slay, kill”

Would you be willing to shed some light on which of the foregoing terms appears most accurate? Thank you in advance for your consideration.

Good Morning!

Thanks for the message.  Not every day that I get to dust off my Hebrew syntax and morphology!  

So, after looking at what you have asked about, לא תרצח (lo tirzach)doesn't seem, at least as I look at the root for  תרצח being רָצַח (ratsach), to have any kind of reference to singing.  So, what we have, then, in Exodus 20:13 is לא (lo) which means "not, no, un-, without, -less; northing" (according to BDB, and of course, it depends on what kind of word לא is attached to i.e. noun, verb, adjective, etc.). When connected to the Qal, imperfect, second person, masculine singular of רָצַח (which then becomes תרצח), the phrase becomes "You shall not murder."  So, basically, any time (and that may be painting with a broad brush a bit)that the word לא is added to a verb, that verb is negated.  In other words, it becomes a prohibition or command to not do what the verb does...if that makes sense.  And, of course, you have to take into consideration the tense, gender, and person of the verb too.

I think that drives at your question, but If I'm missing the mark, let me know!

Pastor:

I appreciate your response. My question was apparently unclear.

I don’t know how a reference to “singing” emerged. Additionally, my query was not intended to express confusion regarding the negation (viz., “lo”) of “tirtzach.” It was confusion regarding the variances in the use of “tirtzach” vis-a-vis “ratsach.” Please note that the bracketed “sing.” referenced the singularity of the pronoun “you,” not “singing.”

The discussion included Luther’s comment that we should not “hurt or harm our neighbor in his body.” The semantic domain for “lo tirtzach” would appear to be much broader than “hurt or harm [to] our neighbor in his body.”

I would draw your attention to Ibn Ezra’s commentary on Exodus 20:13: 1: Murder. Whether physically or by your speech--by lying, gossiping, deliberately giving fatal advice, or failing to reveal a secret that might save a life. If you do not reveal it, you are like a murderer. (Emphasis added.)

This, in my estimation, lends credence to the following order of The Ten Commandments: (1) Commandments 1-5 deal with man’s relationship to God, the 5th having to do with the parents as God’s earthly representation to their offspring; and (2) Commandments 6-10 representing man’s relationship to man. This of course obviates the need to uncouple the Commandment regarding covetousness.

 

Abraham ben Meir Ibn Ezra was one of the most distinguished Jewish biblical commentators and philosophers of the Middle Ages. If the reference to speech is accurate, this suggests a much greater scope of life to which the Commandment applies. This would suggest an incorporation of the 8th/9th Commandment (i.e., You shall not bear false witness).

The inquiry was to determine which of the two terms, “tirtzach” or “ratsach,” is the most accurate. Are you able to offer guidance as to when we are to use these terms?

Thank you once again for your consideration.

JENNA ELLIS IN THE MORNING

 Jenna,

I’ve admired you for your courageous stands on both Christianity and Conservatism for quite some time. I did watch and listen to your tearful-plea of guilty in Fulton County, Ga. Although I was saddened to learn of this, it is certainly understandable that you would not want to risk being found guilty of various felonies in such a blue-county.

In light of the fact that you stated, had you performed your due-diligence, you would not have undertaken representation of President Trump, you may have unnecessarily alienated a large swath of your audience.

I have been a practicing attorney for 30+ years. I closely watched and listened to sworn testimony presented before various state legislators. There was certainly ample evidence of voter fraud. Naturally, the evidence a judge will review, if any evidence whatsoever is admitted, determines, at least to a great extent, the outcome of a bench trial. Whether the fraud was sufficient to overturn the results of the election will never be known.

I have not understood why the assertions of voter-fraud have been deemed invalid by those who formerly represented President Trump.

Do you think that your intro. for the AFR “Jenna Ellis in the Morning” show should be changed to no longer include either President Trump’s endorsement or reference to your representation of President Trump?

I would also encourage you to address, to the extent possible and in accordance with your plea-agreement, why you stated that you would have declined representation. Furthermore, in light of your conviction, I would suggest that you owe it to your Christian audience to express remorse for your conduct.

Some questions about the Bidens’ 1977 Catholic wedding

 NB: This article was published at the link identified below. It has been reproduced in its entirety.

For quite some time, I have been puzzled about the relative silence regarding the nuptials of Joe and Jill Biden, especially since President Biden has told us repeatedly that he is a devout, practicing Catholic.

In Where the Light Enters: Building a Family, Discovering Myself (2019), Jill’s autobiography, we learn that she and Joe were married at the UN Chapel on June 17, 1977—and, she says, “by a Catholic priest.”

That factoid caused further puzzlement: Why get married at the UN? Neither of the Bidens had any apparent connection to that institution. Given that Joe has been a “priest-collector” his whole life, why go to New York to be married by an anonymous priest? Was he even a priest in good standing? After all, some ex-priests make a handsome living out of performing weddings.

Online searches for information on the UN Chapel turns up an article about it in the New York Times from May 9, 1976 (“UN Chapel Weddings: Ecumenical Spirit”). The chaplain was a Rev. Dr. Melvin Hawthorne, a minister of the United Methodist Church. He says that the chapel does not have an actual relationship with the United Nations, but that many people associated with the UN do opt for his chapel. In 1976, the chapel was the site of over 400 weddings, 60% of which were for couples of different faiths, many of whom had “run into snags elsewhere.”

So, what might the “snags” have been for the devout Catholic Joe Biden and his fiancee? A number of permissions would have been needed (e.g., mixed marriage since Jill is not Catholic; permission to marry outside a church or oratory). Did they participate in the required pre-nuptial investigation, which should have uncovered that Jill was previously married in February 1970 and divorced in March 1975?

An article in the July 24, 1977 edition of Wilmington, Delaware newspaper The Morning News, titled “‘Catholic’ Joe Biden avoids telling the press his wife is a divorcee,” reports Biden saying, “I thought the fact that Jill was married before had no relevance.”

If they did participate in the pre-nuptial investigation, was Jill willing to submit that union to a diocesan tribunal for a possible decree of nullity? If she engaged that process, was such a decree issued? What about the couple’s participation in marriage preparation, known as pre-Cana instructions? Admittedly, some of these matters are more serious than others.

The next step in consideration was to ascertain if the Biden wedding was indeed approved by the Catholic Church. If that ceremony was recognized by the Church, it should have been entered into the marriage register of the parish church in whose boundaries the UN Chapel sits, which is Holy Family Church. The pastor, Father Gerald Murray (coincidentally, a canon lawyer) and well-known member of Raymond Arroyo’s “Papal Posse” on EWTN, stated clearly that no such ceremony or any file for that event is to be found at Holy Family Church. Father Murray went on to mention that several weddings of Catholics at the UN Chapel are, in fact, registered at his church.

So, why not that of the Bidens?

In a call to the chancellor of the Diocese of Wilmington (where Biden’s domicile is), I asked this question of the chancellor’s secretary (since the chancellor was not in the office): In the knowledge of the Diocese, did the wedding take place according to canonical form?

Within an hour, the diocesan director of communications called me back to say that the Diocese cannot comment on the sacramental life of parishioners. When reminded that we are not asking about sins confessed in the Sacrament of Penance but about the reality or non-reality of a public act and sacrament, very politely but firmly, he repeated that the Diocese would not comment on the situation.

The facts of the case, then, appear to be: No Catholic wedding is recorded in the usual places for the Bidens in the Archdiocese of New York, where the ceremony took place. The Diocese of his canonical domicile would not answer a very simple question. If Joe and Jill are truly married in the eyes of Christ’s Church, the answer would likely have been forthcoming as simply: “Yes, of course, they are validly married.”

Absent that declaration, one may suppose that something is seriously amiss.

Again, this is not a private matter between Joe, Jill, family members, and priest. Marriage is public by its nature; it affects the entire community of the Church, and the People of God have a right to know the truth.

From his years in Catholic schools (about which he always reminds us), President Biden should have recalled Our Lord’s warning: “For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open” (Lk 8:17).

(Editor’s note: As of this posting, the White House has not responded to a CWR request for information about the Bidens’ 1977 wedding.)

(https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2023/01/27/some-questions-about-the-bidens-1977-catholic-wedding/)