46 Bible Verses about Killing

“You shall not commit murder (unjustified, deliberate homicide).

‘You shall not murder.

For your lifeblood I will most certainly require an accounting; from every animal [that kills a person] I will require it. And from man, from every man’s brother [that is, anyone who murders] I will require the life of man.
“Whoever sheds man’s blood [unlawfully],
By man (judicial government) shall his blood be shed,
For in the image of God
He made man.

For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement, by reason of the life [which it represents].’

“Whoever sheds man’s blood [unlawfully],
By man (judicial government) shall his blood be shed,
For in the image of God
He made man.

“Whoever strikes a man so that he dies must be put to death.

“You shall not allow a woman who practices sorcery to live. “Whoever lies with an animal must be put to death. “He who sacrifices to any god, other than to the Lord alone, shall be put under a ban (designated) for destruction (execution).

“If any case is too difficult for you to judge—between one kind of homicide and another, between one kind of lawsuit and another, between one kind of assault and another, being controversial issues in your courts—then you shall arise and go to the place which the Lord your God chooses. So you shall come to the Levitical priests or to the judge who is in office at that time, and you shall consult them and they will declare to you the verdict in the case. You shall act in accordance with the terms of the verdict which they declare to you from that place which the Lord chooses. You shall be careful to act in accordance with all of their instructions. read more.
You shall act in accordance with the law which they teach you and the judgment which they tell you. You shall not turn aside from their verdict, to the right or to the left. The man who acts presumptuously and insolently by not listening to the priest who stands there to serve the Lord your God, nor to the judge, that man shall die; so you shall remove the evil from Israel. Then all the people will hear and be afraid, and will not act presumptuously again.

“If any man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or of his mother, and when they reprimand and discipline him, he will not listen to them, then his father and mother shall take hold of him, and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gateway of his hometown. They shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey us, he is a glutton and a drunkard.’ read more.
Then all the men of his city shall stone him to death; so you shall remove the evil from among you, and all Israel will hear of it and be afraid.

then they shall bring her out to the doorway of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death because she has committed a deliberate sin in Israel by playing the prostitute in her father’s house. So you shall remove the evil from among you. “If a man is intimate with a woman who is another man’s wife, they shall both be put to death, the man who lay with the woman, and the woman. So you shall remove the evil from Israel. “If a young woman who is a virgin is engaged (legally betrothed) to a man, and another man finds her in the city and is intimate with her, read more.
then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city and stone them to death—the young woman because she did not cry out for help [though she was] in the city, and the man because he has violated his neighbor’s [promised] wife. So you shall remove the evil from among you. “However, if the man finds the girl who is engaged (legally betrothed) in the [open] field, and seizes her and is intimate with her [by force], then only the man who lies with her shall be put to death. But you shall do nothing to the young woman; she has committed no sin worthy of death, for this is the same as when a man attacks his neighbor and murders him. When he found her in the [open] field, the engaged girl [may have] cried out for help, but there was no one to [hear and] save her.

his body shall not hang all night on the tree, but you shall most certainly bury him on the same day (for he who is hanged is cursed by God), so that you do not defile your land which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance.

However, if he did not lie in wait [for him], but God allowed him to fall into his hand, then I will establish for you a place to which he may escape [for protection until duly tried].

Then Moses set apart three cities [of refuge] beyond the Jordan toward the rising of the sun (eastward), so that someone who committed manslaughter could flee there, [that is, a person] who killed his neighbor unintentionally and without previously having hostility toward him, and that by escaping to one of these cities he might [claim the right of asylum and] save his life:

you shall designate three cities for yourself in the central area of the land, which the Lord your God is giving you to possess. You shall prepare and maintain for yourself the roads [to these cities], and divide the territory of your land into three parts, so that anyone who kills another unintentionally may escape there [for asylum]. “Now this is the case of the offender (manslayer) who may escape there and live [protected from vengeance]: when he kills his neighbor unintentionally, not having hated him previously— read more.
as [for example] when a man goes into the forest with his neighbor to cut wood, and his hand swings the axe to cut down the tree, but the iron head slips off the wooden handle and hits his companion and he dies—the offender may escape to one of these cities and live; otherwise the avenger of blood might pursue the offender in the heat of anger, and overtake him, because it is a long way, and take his life, even though he did not deserve to die, since he did not hate his neighbor beforehand. Therefore, I command you, saying, ‘You shall set aside three cities [of refuge] for yourself.’ “If the Lord your God enlarges your border, as He has sworn to your fathers to do, and gives you all the land which He promised to give to your fathers— if you keep and carefully observe all these commandments which I am commanding you today, to love the Lord your God, and to walk [that is, to live each and every day] always in His ways—then you shall add three more cities [of refuge] for yourself, besides these three, so that innocent blood will not be shed [by blood avengers] in your land which the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, and blood guilt will not be on you [for the death of an innocent man]. “But if there is a man who hates his neighbor and lies in wait and ambush for him and attacks him and strikes him down so that he dies, and the assailant escapes to one of these cities, then the elders of his own city shall send for him and have him taken back from there and turn him over to the avenger of blood, so that he may be put to death. You shall not pity him [the guilty one], but you shall purge the blood of the innocent from Israel, so that it may go well with you.

The city and everything that is in it shall be under the ban [that is, designated to be destroyed as a form of tribute] to the Lord; only Rahab the prostitute and all [the people] who are with her in her house shall [be allowed to] live, because she hid and protected the messengers (scouts) whom we sent.

“When you advance to a city to fight against it, you shall [first] offer it terms of peace. If that city accepts your terms of peace and opens its gates to you, then all the people who are found in it shall become your forced labor and shall serve you. However, if it does not make peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall lay siege to it. read more.
When the Lord your God gives it into your hand, you shall strike down all the men in it with the edge of the sword. Only the women and the children and the animals and everything that is in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as plunder for yourself; and you shall use the spoil of your enemies which the Lord your God has given you. That is what you shall do to all the cities that are very far away from you, which are not among the cities of these nations nearby [which you are to dispossess].

“Any man from the house of Israel who kills an ox or lamb or goat in the camp, or kills it outside the camp and has not brought it to the doorway of the Tent of Meeting to offer it as an offering to the Lord before the tabernacle of the Lord, that man shall be guilty of bloodshed. He has shed blood and shall be cut off from his people [excluding him from the atonement made for them]. This is so that the sons of Israel may bring their sacrifices which they were sacrificing [to idols] in the open field [where they killed them], that they may bring them in to the Lord, at the doorway of the Tent of Meeting to the priest, and sacrifice them as sacrifices of peace offerings to the Lord. read more.
The priest shall sprinkle the blood on the altar of the Lord at the doorway of the Tent of Meeting and offer the fat up in smoke as a sweet and soothing aroma to the Lord. So they shall no longer offer their sacrifices to goat-idols or demons or field spirits with which they have played the prostitute. This shall be a permanent statute for them throughout their generations.”’

“However, you may slaughter and eat meat within any of your [city] gates, whatever you wish, according to the blessing of the Lord your God which He has given you [as His generous provision for daily life]. The [ceremonially] unclean and the clean may eat it, such as the gazelle and the deer. Only you shall not eat the blood; you are to pour it out on the ground like water.

“If you happen to come upon a bird’s nest along the road, in any tree or on the ground, with young ones or eggs, and the mother [bird] is sitting on the young or on the eggs, you shall not take the mother with the young. You shall certainly let the mother go, but you may take the young for yourself, so that it may be well with you and that you may prolong your days.