In the last Mishnah, we spoke about how a person is allowed to kill a thief who’s breaking into a house in order to make sure that the thief doesn’t kill the owner of the house. Here, we’ll give other examples where someone could do something similar. These are people whom we save from sinning even at the cost of their lives. We kill them, if necessary, to prevent them from carrying out the following aveirot (sins). To add a little detail, we only kill them if that’s necessary. If we could stop them in some other way, by wounding them—for example, hurting them in the leg to stop them—that would be the necessary way to do it. This is a last-case scenario: after they were warned, after we tried to stop them, and after we can’t wound them, then a person has permission to stop that person by, unfortunately, having to kill them. If somebody is running after his friend in order to kill him, that person is called a rodef (the pursuer), and we’re allowed to kill the pursuer. If somebody is chasing after a man in order to have inappropriate relations with him against his will, we would also kill that person. Or, if someone is chasing after a na'arah (young woman) who’s engaged to somebody, and he’s trying to violate her against her will, in all these cases, if we have no other choice, we kill the rodef, the pursuer, to stop the victim from being killed or violated.
But in the cases we’re going to list now, we’re not allowed to kill them, even though they’re committing a serious aveirah. Somebody is running after an animal to commit a sin with it. Somebody who is desecrating Shabbat, violating Shabbat, or somebody who is worshipping idols: we’re not allowed to save them—in other words, kill them—to prevent them from eventually violating this mitzvah (commandment), even though these are very serious aveirot. We’re not allowed to kill the rodef. In these cases, when someone is trying to do these aveirot, we’re not allowed to stop them from doing this sin. And of course, you’re not allowed to stop other people from doing even minor sins. You’re not allowed to kill them to stop minor sins. You’re only allowed to kill a rodef when it’s necessary to protect somebody else from something like we listed earlier.