Man the Outlaw #2: False Witness

You shall not give false testimony

against your neighbor.

~Deuteronomy 5:20

Much as I wish that this commandment was against lying in general, and much as the rest of the Tanakh expresses a hatred of lies, technically this is not a commandment against lying. It is against lying to someone else's injury. Specifically falsely accusing another person of a crime, or failing to speak truthfully in a legal proceeding.

Middle Eastern culture has generally always been tolerant of what might be called "salesmanship," even in ancient times. If you are selling a sheep, you say that it's the best sheep ever, even if it has scabs on its udder and walks around like a drunken panda. It is actually somewhat expected. Much as the Lord expresses hatred of falsehood, it is not one of the Commandments that you mustn't ever lie. It is one of the commandments that you must not lie to someone else's harm. Particularly, you must not say someone did something they didn't do. This is a particularly pointed commandment since most legal punishments including death required two witnesses. The honesty of those witnesses is of the utmost importance to protect the innocent.

This fact is brought home in the story in 1 Kings 21 where the wicked king Ahab wanted to buy a vineyard owned by Naboth the Jezreelite for his vegetable garden. This vineyard was conveniently located next to his palace.

But Naboth replied, "The Lord forbid that I should give you the inheritance of my ancestors."

Ahab went home and pouted. His super-wicked wife Jezebel conspired to get the land anyway by getting two "scoundrels" to falsely accuse Naboth of capital offenses. Naboth was killed, Ahab got the land.

Honestly, we rarely lie for someone else's well-being. It can happen though: if a child asks how his or her father died, you don't say he cried like a little bitch and puked on himself. You say he was brave. Some may disagree with that, but in that case it is a favor to the dead person to not go into the gory details.

Almost all the lies we tell are to our own benefit though, and often to another's harm. They are intended to give us a benefit our deeds do not deserve. The aforementioned "salesmanship" is to the harm of the buyer if he believes it. By telling the truth to the customer, perhaps you don't maximize profit, but at least you gain a reputation for honesty which is practically an endangered species these days. Everyone lies, the world is full of lies. We are living in a "post-truth" era.

And whether it is technically a commandment or not, it is clear in the Tanakh: G-d hates lies.


*As an aside, Naboth is clearly a man after my own heart. If in many periods of American history farmers had refused to put their land in hock to chase profits, there would be a hell of a lot more small family farms in the country now and more people would be on their ancestors' own land rather than working wage slavery in cities. This tendency was particularly damaging in the South, where independent yeoman farmers who were for generations subsistence farmers with crops like cotton or tobacco on the side for cash, wound up in debt to buy equipment and tractors and trucks to invest in the unstable markets for cotton and tobacco and sugar and rice. In the end their lands were often swallowed up by the big fish when they couldn't pay off their debts. Ahab and Jezebel have many children today, particularly in the banks. If you are lucky enough to have a family farm that has been in your family for years, never put it in mortgage to chase some short-term profit. It's a sacred trust from your ancestors.