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A lot of people use this to justify their stand against capital punishment. While I oppose CP, I think the use of this verse is completely inappropriate. In fact, pointing to anything in the Old Testament to support a claim that God opposes killing, death and war seems a bit far-fetched to me.
The verse is found in Exodus 20:13 and restated in Deuteronomy 5:17. The verse is translated, "You shall not murder" in the New American Standard Version, as opposed to the "Thou shalt not kill" in the King James. Hence, as many evangelical and fundamentalist Christians don't view the KJV as a terribly accurate translation, they don't see the verse as referring to the same thing as capital punishment (execution) at all. You just won't get anywhere arguing with them using this passage.
To the contrary, in fact, the Old Testament is chock-full of God's commanding the Jews to kill all manner of people, which would seem to be in direct opposition to his own commandment. Moses hadn't even made it down the mountain when God commanded that the Levites carry out the execution of "every man his brother, and every man his friend, and every man his neighbor" for their disobedience with the golden calf (Ex. 32:27). Later, in Leviticus 20 and 24, God commands capital punishments for all kinds of naughty things. And still later, he commands Joshua to conquer the land of the Hittites, starting with Jericho. "And they utterly detstroyed everything in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox and sheep and donkey, with the edge of the sword" (Josh 6:21). Joshua and the kings who followed him were judged as very godly for carrying out God's command in their bloody conquest of Israel.
So it just seems odd to me that someone would use this one verse to paint a picture of the god of the Old Testament as someone who frowned on killing or even murder, when he praised it in so many other passages.
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