Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. (Exodus 20:16)1
In the previous installment, I provided the following six criteria Yahweh placed within His judicial system to assure maximum protection against false testimony in His courts of law.
- Frivolous cases, not meriting the court’s attention, are to be dismissed before going to litigation (Proverbs 24:28).
- A maledictory oath to Yahweh2 must be provided by all litigants, which could result in the death penalty if perjured (Exodus 22:10-11).
- Every matter requires two or more witnesses (Deuteronomy 19:15).
- Judges are to make diligent inquiry of all litigants (Deuteronomy 19:16-18).
- Witnesses must be prepared to assist in dispensing judgment, particularly in capital cases (Deuteronomy 17:5-7).
- Lex talionis – an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a limb for a limb, and a life for a life – is the judgment against false accusers, with no allowance for clemency (Deuteronomy 19:16-21).
If these criteria were enforced, false testimony would all but disappear from courts of law.
Defamation
Lex talionis alone would all but assure truthful testimony in most instances, with the exception of slander or libel cases in which no physical damage or identifiable monetary consequence is involved. In cases of this nature, it is impossible to exact a comparable compensation for the damages incurred. Consequently, a fixed monetary judgment would be the only alternative to lex talionis. Because no other defamation cases exist in the Bible wherein a judgment amount is prescribed, the following judgment is case law in such instances:
If any man take a wife, and go in unto her, and hate her, and give occasions of speech against her, and bring up an evil name upon her, and say, I took this woman, and when I came to her, I found her not a maid [virgin]: Then shall the father of the damsel, and her mother, take and bring forth the tokens of the damsel’s virginity unto the elders of the city in the gate: And the damsel’s father shall say unto the elders, I gave my daughter unto this man to wife, and he hateth her; and, lo, he hath given occasions of speech against her, saying, I found not thy daughter a maid; and yet these are the tokens of my daughter’s virginity. And they shall spread the cloth before the elders of the city. And the elders of that city shall take that man and chastise him; and they shall amerce him in an hundred shekels of silver, and give them unto the father of the damsel, because he hath brought up an evil name upon a virgin of Israel: and she shall be his wife; he may not put her away all his days. (Deuteronomy 22:13-19)
The judgment against defamation is twofold. Chastisement, found in verse 18, is the first judgment. The word “chastise” is translated from the Hebrew word yacar:
…a primitive root; to chastise, literally (with blows) or figuratively (with words); hence, to instruct.3
In this instance, yacar would surely entail physical blows or stripes. A simple dressing-down by the judge would add very little, if anything, to the second judgment and would certainly be a part of the sentencing in every case.
Other than the stipulation that the number of stripes not exceed forty, the severity of the beating in any particular case is left to the discretion of the judge:
If there be a controversy between men, and they come unto judgment, that the judges may judge them; then they shall justify the righteous, and condemn the wicked. And it shall be, if the wicked man be worthy to be beaten, that the judge shall cause him to lie down, and to be beaten before his face, according to his fault, by a certain number. Forty stripes he may give him, and not exceed: lest, if he should exceed, and beat him above these with many stripes, then thy brother should seem vile unto thee. (Deuteronomy 25:1-3)
The second judgment, found in verse 19, is a fine of one-hundred shekels of silver to be paid to the victim. A shekel was considered equal to a day’s wage; therefore, one-hundred shekels would be one-hundred day’s wages – nearly a third of a year’s pay. Until we return to a silver standard at an equivalent value, this judgment must be computed according to the traducer’s daily wage. If his daily wage is $50, he would be liable for $5,000; if $100, he would be liable for $10,000; and if $200, he would liable for $20,000 in damages to the one he slandered or libeled. If this judgment were enforced today, cases of defamation would be very rare indeed. It would also transform today’s media, which, as a rule, is far more concerned with producing sensational copy than with risking libel.
This may initially seem too stiff a penalty, until you consider how much your good name and reputation is worth:
A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches…. (Proverbs 22:1)
A good name is better than precious ointment…. (Ecclesiastes 7:1)
If you put yourself in the victim’s shoes, suddenly this judgment may even seem a little lenient.
Because 18th and 19th-century American courts provided little recourse against defamation, dueling – a transgression of Exodus 21:12-19 – became what many considered the only alternative to protecting their names and reputations. People were wounded or killed because the courts failed to provide Biblical recourse. Although the courts occasionally brought judgment against the duelers, they never addressed their own failure, which was, at least in part, the cause of dueling.
Today’s courts do no better: in most instances this crime is ignored. Dueling has gone out of fashion, so the average person today must simply live with the consequences of defamation.
A Heart Transgression
These are the things that ye shall do; Speak ye every man the truth to his neighbour; execute the judgment of truth and peace in your gates: And let none of you imagine evil in your hearts against his neighbour; and love no false oath: for all these are things that I hate, saith YHWH.4 (Zechariah 8:16-17)
In agreement with Proverbs 6, Zechariah points out that one of the things Yahweh hates most is a false witness against a brother or neighbor. He also notes, as did Yeshua,5 that this sin originates in one’s heart:
But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: These are the things which defile a man…. (Matthew 15:18-20)
Conversely, King David provides a glimpse into the actions and thus the heart of a righteous man:
YHWH, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? Who shall dwell in thy holy hill? He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart. He that backbiteth not with his tongue, nor doeth evil to his neighbour, nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbour. (Psalm 15:1-3)
False accusing and backbiting are two different expressions of the same sin. The only difference between the two is bravado. A false accuser is not afraid to slander someone in his presence, while a backbiter will only do so if the victim is not present.
Psalm 15:3 describes the righteous man as one who will not take up a reproach against his neighbor; in other words, he will not entertain a traducer. In 1 Corinthians 13, in addition to other attributes, the Apostle Paul depicted love as thinking no evil and not rejoicing in iniquity, both of which are contravened by the false accuser and backbiter, who relish in hearing and telling such things about others, whether truthful or not.
A righteous man not only refuses to participate in such sins, but he will also do his best to deliver his brother from them:
The words of the wicked … lie in wait for blood: but the mouth of the upright shall deliver them. (Proverbs 12:6)
This would be true of any transgression against a brother or neighbor, not just murder.
When it comes to slander or libel, it is not enough to be a passive or silent non-participant. We are duty-bound to come to a brother’s defense in public, on the Internet, or in a court of law:
And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove [expose, NASV] them. (Ephesians 5:11)
To know the right thing to do and not to do it is a sin (James 4:17). We should not even need to ask about the right thing to do when a brother is being defamed.
Required Testimony
Ephesians 5:11 is essentially a reiteration of Yahweh’s law demanding testimony of all witnesses:
Now if a person sins, after he hears a public adjuration to testify, when he is a witness, whether he has seen or otherwise known, if he does not tell it, then he will bear his guilt. (Leviticus 5:1, NASV)
To fail to intervene or testify against a crime – including slander and libel – is known in legal jargon as misprision. In simple terms, misprision means to do nothing to effect the apprehension or conviction of a criminal:
Misprision of felony is the like concealment of felony, without giving any degree of maintenance to the felon…. Misprision of treason is the concealment of treason by being merely passive…. It is the duty of every good citizen, knowing of a treason or felony having been committed, to inform a magistrate [at the very least]. Silently to observe the commission of a felony, without using any endeavors to apprehend the offender, is a misprision. …The passive omission to do one’s duty – to stand by and make no attempt to apprehend the offender or give information to the police. The least degree of assent makes the person a principal in treason, or in felonies a principal or accessory.6
Anyone who refuses to testify to a crime is an accessory to the same crime. As a witness, you are duty-bound by Leviticus 5:1 to testify regardless of possible consequences:
YHWH, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? Who shall dwell in thy holy hill? He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart. …He that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not. (Psalm 15:1-4)
Silence is not always golden – sometimes it is yellow! A witness to a crime who because of threats or intimidation refuses to testify against a criminal or on behalf of an innocent person, violates the Ninth Commandment. Any passive or silent witness to a crime, whether in a courtroom or in public, is a false witness himself in that he is false to the victim.
When a witness can be intimidated into not testifying, he not only emboldens the wicked, he also becomes party to the crime against the innocent. By his failure to speak out, and in some instances to intervene, he becomes a transgressor of the following Ninth Commandment statute:
Thou shalt not raise a false report: put not thine hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness. Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil; neither shalt thou speak in a cause to decline after many to wrest judgment. (Exodus 23:1-2)
The man who fails or refuses to testify or to simply reprove the unrighteous, joins hands with the wicked and becomes a false witness, subject to lex talionis. In order to enforce Leviticus 5:1 (i.e., the obligation to testify), a corresponding judgment must exist. Implement lex talionis, or today’s equivalent of a hundred shekels of silver, as the judgment against those who refuse to testify, and a thug or gangster’s threat loses its potency. The witness no longer has anything to gain by refusing to testify. In fact, the odds would be in the witness’s favor, especially in capital cases, in which the judgment for refusal to testify would be the forfeiture of his life for the life of the litigant or victim for whom he refuses to testify. On the other hand, if he does testify, the criminal against whom he witnesses is put to death – provided it is a Biblical court that demands a speedy and public execution of the condemned (Ecclesiastes 8:11).
Inept Surrogates
I do not understand why anyone would want to replace Yahweh’s perfect laws with inferior and inept surrogates such as the United States Constitution. For example, Yahweh’s law (Leviticus 5:1, etc.) requires that even the criminal must testify against himself, whereas the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution declares that a criminal cannot be forced to do so. In effect, the Fifth Amendment sides with the criminal. American jurisprudence further dictates that no one can be forced to testify against a spouse. To many, this appears to be a good idea, but it certainly does not originate in the Bible. In fact, it is a transgression of Leviticus 5:1.
The Bible describes murder in terms of blood crying from the ground for justice. Certainly, Yahweh would want a wife who is privy to a murder committed by her husband to reveal his crime. Does it seem reasonable that He would prefer the wife to remain loyal to her husband and refuse to testify, allowing the murder to go unsolved?
In Acts 5, the Apostle Peter required Sapphira to testify against her husband Ananias. She chose to lie instead, and Yahweh struck her dead as He had struck Ananias when he refused to testify against himself. On the other hand, in 1 Samuel 25, righteous Abigail testified against her husband Nabal to save his and others’ lives.
The spousal exemption in American jurisprudence came, not from the Bible, but from the Talmud. In his book The Ten Commandments for Today, William Barclay comments upon Talmudic law as it pertains to this and other non-biblical exceptions:
No relation of the man on trial is eligible to give evidence, and the disqualifying relationships are carefully listed – kinsmen, father, brother, father’s brother, mother’s brother, sister’s husband, father’s sister’s husband, mother’s sister’s husband, together with all their sons and sons-in-law. A stepson may not give evidence, but his sons can. In general, no one qualified to be the heir of the person on trial can give evidence (Sanhedrin 3.3, 4; Makkoth 1.8). Neither a friend nor an enemy can give evidence. The friend is described as one who had been the accused’s groomsman and an enemy as one who has not spoken to him for three days, because of a difference (Sanhedrin 3.5).7
This effectively eliminates just about everyone from testifying in courts of law. Because the Talmud is nearly always antithetical to Yahweh’s law, this should come as no surprise. What is surprising are the exceptions to Leviticus 5:1 that R.J. Rushdoony provides in The Institutions of Biblical Law, with no Biblical justification whatsoever:
The right to silence on the grounds of privileged communication is to a degree granted to pastors and doctors. The presupposition in both cases is the same. The statements or confessions made by a person to his pastor or doctor in the course of a formal or professional relationship are privileged communications, because the person in question is in effect confessing to God in the form of a ministering agent. Both doctor and pastor are concerned with health, the one with physical and the other with spiritual health. Salvation literally means health. The Religious nature of a doctor’s calling is a deeply rooted one. Doctors were formerly monks, and hospitals until fairly recently were entirely and exclusively Christian institutions. The modern divorce of both pastor and doctor from Biblical faith does not alter the essential nature of their calling. Privileged communication rests on the presupposition of the religious function of pastor and doctor as God’s servants in the ministry of health. A person’s relationship to them is thus not the property of the human agent but of God. This does not deny the duty of pastor and doctor to urge a person to make restitution where restitution is due, or to urge confession where confession is due. It is their duty to uphold the law of God by urging compliance with it of all who come to them, but they cannot go beyond that fact of counsel.8
I do not know the source of Rushdoony’s idea of “privileged communication,” but it certainly did not come from the laws of Yahweh. Perhaps it came from the Catholic Church’s sacrament known as the Seal of Confession or Seal of Secrecy:
In the “Decretum” of the Gratian … we find … the following declaration of the law as to the seal of confession: “Deponatur sacerdos qui peccata p nitentis pulicare praesumit.”, i.e., “Let the priest who dares to make known the sins of his penitent be deposed.”9
Under Yahweh’s law, the priest, pastor, or doctor who would help to conceal a crime by refusing to testify against a criminal should face either the judgment of lex talionis or today’s equivalent of one-hundred shekels of silver.
Rushdoony also taught that attorneys are exempt from Leviticus 5:1:
There are other limitations on the extent of testimony. Thus, conferences with one’s attorney are privileged communications, since the attorney serves as the defendant’s agent and representative in court. To compel an attorney’s testimony is to deny the defendant his liberty and privacy.10
Except for Yeshua’s repeated denunciation of attorneys, where in the Bible does one find any provision for attorneys – let alone attorney privileges? The principal purpose of defense attorneys who know their clients are guilty is to cover up their crimes and get them acquitted despite their guilt. This makes all such defense attorneys accomplices to the crimes of their clients. Such attorneys should not be exonerated but prosecuted and punished according to lex talionis.
Regrettably, on this particular issue, Rushdoony’s paradigm was not the laws of Yahweh, but pharisaism, which predominates our modern courts.
Yahweh hates a false witness for many reasons, including the following:
A man that beareth false witness against his neighbour is a maul, and a sword, and a sharp arrow. (Proverbs 25:18)
A rascally witness makes a mockery of justice…. (Proverbs 19:28, NASV)
We should hate false accusers as well:
A righteous man hateth lying…. (Proverbs 13:5)
Without the Ninth Commandment, and especially its statutes regarding false witnesses and lex talionis to enforce it, we will never have true justice in our courts.
End Notes
1. All Scripture is quoted from the King James Version unless otherwise noted. Portions of Scripture have been omitted for brevity’s sake. If you have any questions regarding a passage, please open your Bible and study the text to ensure that it has been properly used.
2. YHWH (most often pronounced Yahweh) is the English transliteration of the Tetragrammaton, the principal Hebrew name of the God of the Bible. For a more thorough explanation concerning the use of the names of God, “The Third Commandment” may be read at www.missiontoisrael.org/3rdcom-pt1.php, or the book Thou shalt not take the name of Yahweh thy God in vain may be ordered from Mission to Israel Ministries, PO Box 248, Scottsbluff, Nebraska, 69363, for a suggested $4 donation.*
3. James Strong, “Hebrew and Chaldee Dictionary,” The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, s.v. “yacar” (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1990) p. 50.
4. Where the Tetragrammaton – the four Hebrew characters transliterated “YHWH” and representing the personal name of God – has been incorrectly rendered the LORD or GOD in Scripture, I have taken the liberty to correct this error by inserting YHWH where appropriate. For a more thorough explanation concerning the use of the sacred names of God, “The Third Commandment” may be read at www.missiontoisrael.org/3rdcom-pt1.php, or the book Thou shalt not take the name of Yahweh thy God in vain may be ordered from Mission to Israel Ministries, PO Box 248, Scottsbluff, Nebraska 69363, for a suggested $4 donation.*
5. Yeshua is the English transliteration of our Savior’s Hebrew name. For a more thorough explanation concerning the use of the sacred names of God, “The Third Commandment” may be read at www.missiontoisrael.org/3rdcom-pt1.php, or the book Thou shalt not take the name of Yahweh thy God in vain may be ordered from Mission to Israel Ministries, PO Box 248, Scottsbluff, Nebraska 69363, for a suggested $4 donation.*
6. John Bouvier, Bouvier’s Law Dictionary: A Concise Encyclopedia of the Law, 3 vols., s.v. “Misprision” (Kansas City, MO: Vernon Law Book Company, 1914) vol. 2, pp. 2225-2226.
7. William Barclay, The Ten Commandments for Today (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1946) pp. 199-200.
8. Rousas John Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1973) p. 567.
9. “The Law of the Seal of Confession,” Online Catholic Encyclopedia, www.newadvent.org/cathen/13649b.htm.
10. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law, p. 567.
*We are admonished in Matthew 10:8 “freely ye have received, freely give.” Although there is a suggested price for our books, we do not sell them. In keeping with 2 Corinthians 9:7, this ministry is supported by freewill offerings. If you cannot afford the suggested price, inform us of your situation, and we will be pleased to provide you with whatever you need for whatever you can send.
