The biblical commandment “Thou shalt not kill”

The biblical commandment “Thou shalt not kill” becomes more than a religious rule in this scene: it is a demand Shug places before Celie at the moment Celie is contemplating violence against Albert. Their exchange tests the distance between a moral prohibition and the pain of obeying it. Shug appeals to Christ, but also to Nettie’s expected return; Celie answers that neither Christ’s example nor her sister’s attachment makes her anger disappear. The scene ends not with a settled promise, but with Celie feeling sick and numb while still saying that killing Albert seems preferable.

The commandment in a moment of crisis

The exchange follows Celie’s effort to read Nettie’s letters. Shock and crying have made the reading slow; by the time Celie reaches the part about Nettie being settled in Africa, Albert and Grady have come home. That immediate context matters: Celie has just been confronted with news of the sister from whom she has been separated, while the man she wants to kill is nearby in the household. Shug asks whether Celie can handle the situation, and Celie responds by asking how she can keep herself from killing him. The commandment enters the scene as an answer to a stated impulse, not as an abstract lesson detached from danger or anger.

Shug’s first response is direct: “Don’t kill.” She connects restraint to Nettie, who will be coming home, and warns that Celie should not make her return to someone viewed as Sofia is viewed by the two women. The comparison makes Celie’s possible violence carry a relational consequence. The appeal is not only that killing is forbidden; Celie is asked to consider the person she may become in Nettie’s eyes and the bond she expects to resume. Sofia serves here as a shared point of reference, though the exchange does not explain the comparison further. Shug’s argument rests on what Celie means to Nettie and on the prospect of their reunion, rather than on punishment or threat.

Shug’s appeal to Christ

When Celie says that restraint is hard, Shug acknowledges the difficulty rather than denying it: “Hard to be Christ too.” She recalls Christ’s command, “Thou Shalt Not Kill,” and imagines that he might have wanted to add “Starting with me.” The added thought gives the prohibition an intimate edge: the person who speaks against killing would himself be among those spared. Shug’s account presents the command as a discipline applied even where anger might make an exception seem tempting. Its force lies in refusing to treat the speaker’s own case as exempt.

That example does not persuade Celie simply by being sacred. She replies, “But Mr. _____ not Christ. I’m not Christ,” rejecting the implied equivalence between the biblical figure and two people implicated in a painful domestic conflict. The contrast exposes a limit in Shug’s appeal: a command can be clear while the person asked to obey it remains wounded, furious, and human. Shug’s response shifts from religious example to relationship—“You somebody to Nettie”—and insists that Celie’s choices matter to someone who is on her way home. In this way, the commandment is reinforced not by a claim that anger is unreal, but by the ties Celie still has and the future those ties make possible.

Celie’s unresolved response

Celie does not claim that the reasoning has changed what she wants. She says that it is hard, then insists that Albert is not Christ and that she is not Christ either. After Shug empties her suitcase and puts Nettie’s letters inside, Celie says she thinks she would feel better if she killed him. The movement from the specific protest that she is no Christ to the renewed wish to kill prevents the scene from becoming a simple conversion to restraint. Shug’s appeal has offered reasons to stop; it has not erased Celie’s anger or produced a declaration that she will obey.

The scene closes instead on Celie’s condition: she feels sickish and numb. That ending leaves the commandment’s practical outcome unsettled. In the kitchen, Celie and Shug hear Albert and Grady, dishes rattling, and the safe opening and shutting. The sounds return the moral argument to the shared house and to Albert’s immediate presence, without revealing what happens next. Against that ordinary domestic noise, the biblical prohibition remains sharply personal: it names the act Celie is considering, while the conversation shows the emotional and relational pressures that make obedience difficult. Its significance here lies in that unresolved interval between an acknowledged rule and a still-active desire.