“Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.”
It gives us pain to hear that others speak ill of us. “Let the honour
of thy neighbour be as dear to thee as thine own” (Aboth ii. 10). We
must therefore not speak ill of our neighbour. But it is not only the
speaking ill of others that this commandment forbids; we must not say
of our fellow-man anything that is not true. If we are called as a
witness in a court of justice, we must be most careful that every word
we utter be perfectly true. We must weigh our words well and guard
ourselves against stating as facts things about which we are not quite
certain. If we are careless we may become false witnesses, and may even
be guilty of perjury.
The consequences of false evidence are of a very grave nature; it
misleads the judge, perverts justice, ruins innocent people; and the
false witness himself—whether he sinned with intention or by
carelessness—will not escape punishment.
God declared through the mouth of the prophet Zechariah (v. 4): “I will
bring forth the curse, saith the Lord of hosts, and it shall enter into
the house of the thief and into the house of him that sweareth falsely
by my name; and it shall remain in the midst of his house, and shall
consume it, with the timber thereof and the stones thereof.”
In order to guard ourselves against the possibility of such a crime, we
must train ourselves in speaking the exact truth in everything, however
trifling it may appear to us. Even in their play children must be
careful in what they utter. Idle talk, gossip, frequently leads us to
speak of our neighbours what is not in harmony with facts. Though we
may believe it to be harmless and to have no evil consequence, it has
in reality very pernicious results; for we get into the habit of being
careless about our words, and of ignoring the line that parts truth
from falsehood, and when we have then to speak on more important
things, or even in a court of justice, we may prove ourselves equally
careless. There is a proverb (Prov. xix. 5): “A faithful witness is he
who doth not lie, but he who uttereth lies will be a false witness;”
i.e., the conduct of a witness with regard to truth in ordinary and
less important utterances is a test of his trustworthiness in more
important matters.