Inconsistencies with the 5th commandment

"“You must not murder"” (Exodus 20:13)

This perhaps should have been the first commandment and is a perfectly good rule to have, but while I was reading the bible I found there to be a number of inconsistencies and contradictions surrounding it.

The first problem occurs just a few paragraphs after the commandment was given, Exodus 21:12 goes as follows:

"“Anyone who strikes a man and kills him shall surely be put to death."

also (ex 21:14) "“But if a man schemes and kills another man deliberately, take him away from my altar and put him to death"”.

So we have a commandment saying do not kill and then a few paragraphs latter it says that a person found breaking this commandment is to be put to death, but surely putting that person to death would be directly violating the 5th commandment. It also means technically that the person responsible for killing the murder should also be put to death and then the person who kills that person and so on...
The death penalty is also the punishment for breaking a number of the other commandments as well. I personally am opposed to the taking of human life, this includes both murder and the death penalty, doesn't the Bible say that the human body is sacred and therefore taking a human life is a sin. The murderer is still a human and still has a right to live‚– the person who executes the murder is also then a murderer.

Murder is quite a common theme that runs through out the Bible and you may (or may not) be surprised to find out that it is God is responsible for the majority of the deaths that occur. You can't expect every one else to follow your commandments if you go round breaking them yourself and setting a bad example, which is exactly what God does throughout the Bible. (I thought that God was supposed to guide humans along the right path and that we are supposed to follow in Gods foot steps).
God kills the first born of all the Egyptians in Exodus 12:29 which can be seen mass murder and isn't an act of a loving God (I'm sure there were other ways to deal with the Egyptians without having to resort to murder - also imagine the signal this is giving to humans i.e. when all else fails it's ok to kill people). Worse still than this in Genesis 7:11 God kills every living thing on the earth apart from a select few, this amounts to genocide and ethnic cleansing on a mass scale and is worse than anything that Hitler or Stalin ever did. There are numerous other accounts of God killing people in the Bible and all seem to dispute the fact that God is all loving, also it shows God to be directly breaking the 5th commandment. Another example is in Numbers 15:32 were a man is found gathering sticks on the Sabbath, this is the first time that the commandments had been broken and again carries the death penalty.

(num 15:35)"Then the Lord said to Moses, "The man shall surely be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him with stones outside the camp."

He doesn't directly carry out the murder but commands others to instead and is a very nasty way to die.

Another account of God commanding the Israelites to carry out ethnic cleansing is in Deuteronomy 2:33-34 - "the LORD our God delivered him over to us and we struck him down, together with his sons and his whole army. ³⁴ At that time we took all his towns and completely destroyed them—men, women and children. We left no survivors.."
Here God Commands that all people inside the city of the Amorites (including children) should be killed because they are a wicked people. This isn't a very moral thing to do no matter how wicked the Amorites were and again involves violating the 5th commandment.

Another interesting thing to note is that while God is always portrayed as all loving and the devil portrayed as all evil and sinful, the amount of times that the Bible actually records that the devil has done an evil act is very little compared to the amount of evil acts God carrys out. The devil certainty doesn't go round killing people like God does (and not on the scale that God does) which shows that God actually breaks the commandment (and sins) more times than the devil does.

Examining the 10 commandments

1st commandment: (Exodus 20:2)
I am the lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
"You shall have no other gods before me."
I have always thought this commandment was a little strange because it seems a bit petty and childish that an all powerful God should be so bothered whether humans believe and worship or not. The reason is probably that, freewill and what people believe is the one thing that God does not control, and God wants people to "follow the right path" by believing. Still, shouldn't God respect the fact humans are free to believe in and worship "other gods" and to choose not to worship at all? You may think that God does indeed respect this freedom, however Leviticus 26:14-44 goes into great detail in explaining some of the punishments for not following the commandments, some are particularly nasty punishments that you wouldn't expect to come from an all loving God, who, remember is punishing you for your free choice and doesn't give the impression of respecting peoples freewill at all. For example some of the punishments include: wasting disease, fever, failure of the eyes, seven punishments from God, plagues, having to eat your children's flesh, seven more chastisements and the destruction of whole cites. It also talks several times about the use of the sword which I can only assume to mean the death penalty. Quite graphic in some places but are they to be taken literally? There is room for interpretation with some of them but others are more specific. Even if it's not to be taken literally the basic idea is that God will make you suffer (also the death penalty is the punishment for breaking a number of the commandments).

There are people who will say that all "sins" should be appropriately punished and that this is an appropriate punishment for breaking one of the most important commandments. I disagree, not that people should be punished appropriately, which they should, but the fact that the passage in Lev 26 is an appropriate punishment. It is appropriate to not allow non-believers into heaven but there is no need to unnecessarily 'torture' them (and kill them) as well. It could be seen as emotional blackmail - repeatedly punishing people until they become a believer, but I may have misinterpreted it and as I'm not God I don't know the reasoning behind it.