The meaning of this hebrew word has been debated by biblical scholars. This post is not intended to enter into the debate, but simply present what I’ve found so as to help with your own reading and interpretation of scripture. Some scholars contend that it can be translated as, “murder,” while others have also translated it as unintentional killing or “manslaughter.” The best reference that I was able to find is in John I. Durham’s, Word Biblical Commentary: Exodus, with an excerpt below:
“This verb occurs just over forty times in the Old Testament (OT), far less frequently than the more general [hebrew term of] ‘kill, slay, destroy,’ (more than 200 times). Stamm (TZ 1 [1945] 81-90) has made a thorough study of the usage of [rāsah] in the OT, and A. Phillips (Criminal Law 83-109) has considered the sixth commandment…[where rāsah] plainly refers to killing that can be understood to be murder (so Psalm 94:6b or 1 Kings 21:19), and some translators so render it; but [rasāh] can also refer to unintentional killing, ‘manslaughter,’ as in Deuteronomy 19:3, 4, 6, and Joshua 20:3, and to the legal execution of a convicted killer, as in Numbers 35:30. Stamm (TZ 1 [1945] 81-90) concluded that [rasāh] is a verb of specialized application referring to killing that brought illegal violence into the covenant community. Reventlow (Gebot und Predigt, 71-77) reined Stamm’s theory, arguing that the Decalogue emerged from concrete situations and that the concrete situations of the sixth commandment involved the killing of the blood-feud (Blutrache).
Neither of these specialized definitions, however, is borne out fully by the usage of [rasāh] in the OT, a difficulty Childs (420-21) attempts to solve by proposing a continuing shift in the meaning of [rasāh] from its earlier techincal sense (“a type of slaying which called forth blood vengeance”) to later and broader applications (“acts of violence against a person which arose from personal feelings of hatred and malice”). The problem posed by such a solution is that it presents a degree of ambiguity to the understanding of a commandment which cannot, for obvious reasons, be dated with any certainty: is [rasāh] here to be understood in its earlier, ‘technical’ sense or in its later ‘broad’ sense? Schulz, commenting that Reventlow’s ‘supposition’ is based on false assumptions (Das Todesrect 9-15, esp. 11, n. 20…), connects the sixth commandment to Exodus 21:12: ‘The one who strikes a man, killing him, will certainly be put to death.” This connection has the advantage, if it can be sustained, of giving a firm point of reference for the sixth commandment. Whatever broadening of application it may have had in later years, its basic prohibition was agains killing for whatever cause, under whatever circumstances, and by whatever method, a fellow-member of the covenant community.”
