Articles
Ten Commandments (9)
The Ten Commandments (9)
Mike Willis
The ninth of the Ten Commandments is this: “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” (Exod. 20:16). Every judicial system depends upon witnesses giving factually true testimony.
To have a judicial system, citizens must be willing to testify what they know. The Torah laid a responsibility on citizens to give testimony relevant to a case: “If anyone sins in that he hears a public adjuration to testify, and though he is a witness, whether he has seen or come to know the matter, yet does not speak, he shall bear his iniquity” (Lev. 5:1).
Since every witness has a different viewpoint, the Mosaical Law made it a crime to convict a man on the testimony of one witness. “A single witness shall not suffice against a person for any crime or for any wrong in connection with any offense that he has committed. Only on the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses shall a charge be established” (Deut. 19:15).
One who bore false testimony against another was to be punished with the punishment that his false testimony would have brought to his neighbor if found guilty: “If a malicious witness arises to accuse a person of wrongdoing, then both parties to the dispute shall appear before the Lord, before the priests and the judges who are in office in those days. The judges shall inquire diligently, and if the witness is a false witness and has accused his brother falsely, then you shall do to him as he had meant to do to his brother. So you shall purge the evil from your midst” (Deut. 19:16-19).
The extrapolation of the ninth commandment is that dishonesty in general, not only in court cases, is forbidden. Jesus said about the Devil that he “does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44). Paul instructed, “. . . let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another” (Eph. 4:25). How sad it is that some of America’s political leaders have learned to lie without remorse, falsely charging their political adversaries with crimes of which they themselves are guilty, and having their political allies to perpetuate their lies through press and social media. It is a disaster when a nation gets to the point that he cannot trust the integrity of its leaders. Has Pinocchio gotten control of our government and our press?
