The Bible considers any bloodshed as the most terrible violation of God's will. It {the dispensation} is the first concrete demonstration of the fall of man, pernicious not only for Man, but also for all the creation (" The voice of your brother's blood is crying to Me from the ground. » Gen 4:10). Murder penetrates into the world because of human sin and becomes the cause of the first human death. The story about Cain’s posterity lets know that bloody violence increases in human society as a snowball. Lamech boasts to have killed a man for a scratch. The rampart on the road of the uncontrollable Man-murderer establishes the first covenant (pact) between God and People - covenant concluded with Noah and his posterity. Since the life of every human being belongs only to God, this covenant, presuming the beginning of the road for the salvation of Man from sin and death, requires the rejection of bloodshed.

The law of Sinai concretizes the notion of murder and establishes certain frames of the forms of violence conjoint to the murder. God's fifth command forbids firmly the murder in its penal sense, which means a deliberate violent deprivation of human life. The law of Sinai raises at the same time other forms of murder (by carelessness, as self-defense etc.), which are not as severely punished as an aforethought murder, but still remain prohibited. The use of violence is admissible only in case of constraint as an answer to violence, but this must be proportional. The requirement “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth " marks then a remarkable step forward in the moral development of the person in comparison with the "boaster Lamech". However, the Law of Sinai allows rather widely the death penalty, making it a legal social form of murder, while forbidding domestic violence, especially those of mercenary motives. Murder is neither forbidden, nor restricted during wars.

However, the understanding of murder and attitude towards violence on a broader scale considerably changed after the conclusion of Sinai’s covenant at the beginning of the prophetical period (8 century before. J.C). The prophet Nathan rebukes King David for Uriah’s death, although the King’s action does not fall within the notion murder, inherent to Moses’ law: the king didn’t commit the murder himself; he just arranged the circumstances necessary for its fulfillment. Nevertheless, the prophet Nathan qualifies the king’s act as murder. The prophet Amos - first of the prophets’ writers proclaims at the beginning of his book God's judgment, especially on the forms of violence which were not forbidden by the law of Sinai. In the following generation after Amos, Esaïe of Jerusalem assimilates social injustice and oppression of the poor to bloodshed. The prophet Esaïe makes know that an economic violence is also abominable to God, as bloodshed. The deprivation of the means of subsistence does not differ from murder; and for all other prophets writers is so too.

Finally the Lord widens and deepens more again the prohibition to murder in the New Testament: He assimilates to the murder any anger of a Man on another in the sermon on the Mountain. Even a subvocal hostility, especially hatred between people is forbidden as a form of murder. The call not to return evil by evil but to overcome the evil by goodness makes impossible the application of the forms of murder which were admitted by the law of Sinai. And any bloodshed becomes then prohibited for Jesus’ followers.

This position became the base of the attitude of the Christian Church regarding murder. Besides, Christians had always understood that they live and act in an imperfect world, where they still have to free their selves from evil. That is why in certain cases the responsibility of the Christian makes his participation in violence unavoidable. But nevertheless, even in this case bloodshed is considered as a sin, needy to be confessed and forgiven.