Q&A: Killing a Noahide
Originally published:
This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.
Killing a Noahide
Question
With God’s help,
Hello Rabbi,
In the daily chapter of Maimonides (Kings 9) they are learning about the seven Noahide commandments.
I wanted to ask how you understand this whole chapter:
1. How do you understand this Maimonides? It seems that a Noahide is executed for almost anything and is worth virtually nothing.
2. Maimonides holds that this is a law given to Moses at Sinai. (law 1)
3. Does he have the ability to repent? Or some formal process so that they will not execute him?
Answer
- I did not understand what is worth less. The life of a gentile? That is certainly not entirely without value (after all, there is a Torah-level prohibition against murdering him). But yes, he is punished severely for every transgression. In several places we see that Jewish law measures the value of life by the number of commandments imposed on a person (for example, in Horayot regarding priority in rescue). Therefore the value of a gentile’s life is viewed as lower than that of a Jew. And perhaps only when he commits a transgression does the value of his life diminish.
- What is the question?
- This is a question regarding every punishment in Jewish law. The accepted view is that repentance does not exempt a person from punishments imposed by a religious court, but there is an opinion that it does. See column 91.
Discussion on Answer
- In principle, yes you can. The law given to Moses at Sinai is that someone who does not behave like a human being should be punished this way. See Maimonides in Root 1 regarding Hanukkah and Purim according to the method of the Halakhot Gedolot, which explained why this cannot be Torah-level. And his words can be rejected, as I wrote here.
In my opinion, question 1 was not understood correctly. It seems the questioner meant that a gentile is apparently executed even for theft of negligible value.
The question was that if this is a law given to Moses at Sinai, then you cannot make the claim that the gentiles in the period of the Sages were different from those today..
Thank you, I’ll read there.