The Bible regards all bloodshed as a grave violation of God's will. It is the first concrete manifestation of humanity's fall into sin, and it is destructive not only for humanity itself but also for all creation ("the voice of your brother's blood cries out to Me from the ground"). Murder enters the world as a result of human sin and becomes the cause of the first human death. The account of Cain's descendants says that bloody violence grows in human society like a snowball: Lamech boasts that he killed a man for a scratch. The first covenant (alliance) between God and people, concluded with Noah and his descendants, places a barrier in the path of uncontrolled homicide. This covenant, which begins the path of humanity's salvation from sin and death, requires the rejection of bloodshed because the life of every living being belongs to God alone.

The Sinai legislation makes the concept of murder more specific and establishes definite limits for the forms of violence connected with it. Moses' fifth commandment categorically forbids murder in the criminal sense of the word, that is, the deliberate violent taking of a human life. At the same time, the Sinai legislation identifies other forms of killing, such as killing through negligence or in self-defense. These remain prohibited, but they are not punished as severely as premeditated murder. According to the Sinai legislation, violence may be used only under compulsion, as a response to violence, and it must be proportionate. The requirement "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" therefore marks a clear step forward in humanity's moral development compared with "Lamech's boast." However, while forbidding everyday violence, especially violence motivated by selfish gain, the Sinai legislation applies the death penalty rather broadly, making it a legally sanctioned social form of killing. Nor is killing in the course of military action prohibited or restricted.

Not long after the Sinai covenant was concluded, however, at the beginning of the prophetic era (the eighth century BC), the understanding of murder and the attitude toward violence in general changed noticeably. The prophet Nathan denounces King David for Uriah's death, although the king's actions do not fall under the concept of murder found in the Law of Moses: the king did not commit the murder himself, but only arranged the circumstances for it. Nevertheless, the prophet Nathan classifies the king's act as murder. The first of the writing prophets, the prophet Amos, begins his book by proclaiming God's judgment precisely against those forms of violence that were not directly forbidden by the Sinai law. In the generation after Amos, Isaiah of Jerusalem equates social injustice and the oppression of the poor with bloodshed. Isaiah says that "economic" violence is just as abhorrent to God as bloodshed. For other writing prophets as well, depriving people of their means of subsistence is no different from taking life.

Finally, in the New Testament, the Lord broadens and deepens the prohibition against murder even further: in the Sermon on the Mount He equates it with any anger of one person toward another. Even inward hostility, and even more so hatred between people, is forbidden as a form of murder. The call not to repay evil with evil, but to overcome evil with good, makes it impossible to use even those forms of killing that were allowed by the Sinai law. All bloodshed becomes prohibited for Christ's disciples.

This position became the basis for the Christian Church's attitude toward murder. At the same time, Christians have always understood that they live and act in an imperfect world that must still be freed from evil. Therefore, in some cases a Christian's responsibility makes participation in violent action unavoidable. Nevertheless, even in that case, bloodshed is regarded as a sin that requires repentance and forgiveness.