Proverbs 12:17

12:17 The faithful witness ¹  tells what is right, ² 

but a false witness ³  speaks ⁴  deceit.

Proverbs 19:5

19:5 A false witness ⁵  will not go unpunished,

and the one who spouts out ⁶  lies will not escape punishment. ⁷ 

Proverbs 19:9

19:9 A false witness will not go unpunished,

and the one who spouts out ⁸  lies will perish. ⁹ 

Proverbs 25:18

25:18 Like a club or a sword or a sharp arrow, ¹⁰ 

so is the one who testifies against ¹¹  his neighbor as a false witness. ¹² 

Exodus 20:16

20:16 “You shall not give ¹³  false testimony ¹⁴  against your neighbor.

Exodus 23:1

Justice

23:1 ¹⁵ “You must not give ¹⁶  a false report. ¹⁷  Do not make common cause ¹⁸  with the wicked ¹⁹  to be a malicious ²⁰  witness.

Deuteronomy 19:16-20

19:16 If a false ²¹  witness testifies against another person and accuses him of a crime, ²²  19:17 then both parties to the controversy must stand before the Lord, that is, before the priests and judges ²³  who will be in office in those days. 19:18 The judges will thoroughly investigate the matter, and if the witness should prove to be false and to have given false testimony against the accused, ²⁴  19:19 you must do to him what he had intended to do to the accused. In this way you will purge ²⁵  evil from among you. 19:20 The rest of the people will hear and become afraid to keep doing such evil among you.

Deuteronomy 19:1

Laws Concerning Manslaughter

19:1 When the Lord your God destroys the nations whose land he ²⁶  is about to give you and you dispossess them and settle in their cities and houses,

Deuteronomy 21:10-15

Laws Concerning Wives

21:10 When you go out to do battle with your enemies and the Lord your God allows you to prevail ²⁷  and you take prisoners, 21:11 if you should see among them ²⁸  an attractive woman whom you wish to take as a wife, 21:12 you may bring her back to your house. She must shave her head, ²⁹  trim her nails, 21:13 discard the clothing she was wearing when captured, ³⁰  and stay ³¹  in your house, lamenting for her father and mother for a full month. After that you may have sexual relations ³²  with her and become her husband and she your wife. 21:14 If you are not pleased with her, then you must let her go ³³  where she pleases. You cannot in any case sell ³⁴  her; ³⁵  you must not take advantage of ³⁶  her, since you have already humiliated ³⁷  her.

Laws Concerning Children

21:15 Suppose a man has two wives, one whom he loves more than the other, ³⁸  and they both ³⁹  bear him sons, with the firstborn being the child of the less loved wife.

Psalms 27:12

27:12 Do not turn me over to my enemies, ⁴⁰ 

for false witnesses who want to destroy me testify against me. ⁴¹ 

Psalms 35:11

35:11 Violent men perjure themselves, ⁴² 

and falsely accuse me. ⁴³ 

Matthew 15:19

15:19 For out of the heart come evil ideas, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.

Matthew 26:59

26:59 The ⁴⁴  chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin were trying to find false testimony against Jesus so that they could put him to death.

Acts 6:13

6:13 They brought forward false witnesses who said, “This man does not stop saying things against this holy place ⁴⁵  and the law. ⁴⁶ 

[12:17]  ¹ tn The text has “he pours out faithfully”; the word rendered “faithfully” or “reliably” (אֱמוּנָה, ’emunah) is used frequently for giving testimony in court, and so here the subject matter is the reliable witness.

[12:17]  ² tn Heb “righteousness.”

[12:17]  ³ tn Heb “witness of falsehoods.” The genitive noun functions attributively, and the plural form depicts habitual action or moral characteristic. This describes a person who habitually lies. A false witness cannot be counted on to help the cause of justice.

[12:17]  ⁴ tn The term “speaks” does not appear in this line but is implied by the parallelism; it is supplied in the translation for clarity and smoothness.

[19:5]  ⁵ tn Heb “a witness of lies.” This expression is an attributive genitive: “a lying witness” (cf. CEV “dishonest witnesses”). This is paralleled by “the one who pours out lies.”

[19:5]  ⁶ tn Heb “breathes out”; NAB “utters”; NIV “pours out.”

[19:5]  ⁷ tn Heb “will not escape” (so NAB, NASB); NIV “will not go free.” Here “punishment” is implied, and has been supplied in the translation for clarity.

[19:9]  ⁸ tn Heb “breathes out”; NAB “utters”; NIV “pours out.”

[19:9]  ⁹ sn The verse is the same as v. 5, except that the last word changes to the verb “will perish” (cf. NCV “will die”; CEV, NLT “will be destroyed”; TEV “is doomed”).

[25:18]  ¹⁰ sn The first line identifies the emblem of the proverb: False witnesses are here compared to deadly weapons because they can cause the death of innocent people (e.g., Exod 20:16; Deut 5:20; and Prov 14:5).

[25:18]  ¹¹ tn The verb עָנָה (’anah) followed by the preposition בְּ (bet) with its object means “to testify against” (answer against someone). With the preposition לְ (lamed) it would mean “to testify for” someone. Here the false witness is an adversary, hence the comparison with deadly weapons.

[25:18]  ¹² tn While עֵד (’ed) could be interpreted as “evidence” (a meaning that came from a metonymy – what the witness gives in court), its normal meaning is “witness.” Here it would function as an adverbial accusative, specifying how he would answer in court.

[20:16]  ¹³ tn Heb “answer” as in a court of law.

[20:16]  ¹⁴ tn The expression עֵד שָׁקֶר (’ed shaqer) means “a lying witness” (B. S. Childs, Exodus [OTL], 388). In this verse the noun is an adverbial accusative, “you will not answer as a lying witness.” The prohibition is against perjury. While the precise reference would be to legal proceedings, the law probably had a broader application to lying about other people in general (see Lev 5:1; Hos 4:2).

[23:1]  ¹⁵ sn People who claim to worship and serve the righteous judge of the universe must preserve equity and justice in their dealings with others. These verses teach that God’s people must be honest witnesses (1-3); God’s people must be righteous even with enemies (4-5); and God’s people must be fair in dispensing justice (6-9).

[23:1]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “take up, lift, carry” (נָשָׂא, nasa’). This verb was also used in the prohibition against taking “the name of Yahweh in vain.” Sometimes the object of this verb is physical, as in Jonah 1:12 and 15. Used in this prohibition involving speech, it covers both originating and repeating a lie.

[23:1]  ¹⁷ tn Or “a groundless report” (see Exod 20:7 for the word שָׁוְא, shav’).

[23:1]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “do not put your hand” (cf. KJV, ASV); NASB “join your hand.”

[23:1]  ¹⁹ tn The word “wicked” (רָשָׁע, rasha’) refers to the guilty criminal, the person who is doing something wrong. In the religious setting it describes the person who is not a member of the covenant and may be involved in all kinds of sin, even though there is the appearance of moral and spiritual stability.

[23:1]  ²⁰ tn The word חָמָס (khamas) often means “violence” in the sense of social injustices done to other people, usually the poor and needy. A “malicious” witness would do great harm to others. See J. W. McKay, “Exodus 23:1-43, 6-8: A Decalogue for Administration of Justice in the City Gate,” VT 21 (1971): 311-25.

[19:16]  ²¹ tn Heb “violent” (חָמָס, khamas). This is a witness whose motivation from the beginning is to do harm to the accused and who, therefore, resorts to calumny and deceit. See I. Swart and C. VanDam, NIDOTTE 2:177-80.

[19:16]  ²² tn Or “rebellion.” Rebellion against God’s law is in view (cf. NAB “of a defection from the law”).

[19:17]  ²³ tn The appositional construction (“before the Lord, that is, before the priests and judges”) indicates that these human agents represented the Lord himself, that is, they stood in his place (cf. Deut 16:18-20; 17:8-9).

[19:18]  ²⁴ tn Heb “his brother” (also in the following verse).

[19:19]  ²⁵ tn Heb “you will burn out” (בִּעַרְתָּ, bi’arta). Like a cancer, unavenged sin would infect the whole community. It must, therefore, be excised by the purging out of its perpetrators who, presumably, remained unrepentant (cf. Deut 13:6; 17:7, 12; 21:21; 22:21-22, 24; 24:7).

[19:1]  ²⁶ tn Heb “the Lord your God.” The pronoun has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons to avoid redundancy.

[21:10]  ²⁷ tn Heb “gives him into your hands.”

[21:11]  ²⁸ tn Heb “the prisoners.” The pronoun has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons, to avoid redundancy.

[21:12]  ²⁹ sn This requirement for the woman to shave her head may symbolize the putting away of the old life and customs in preparation for being numbered among the people of the Lord. The same is true for the two following requirements.

[21:13]  ³⁰ tn Heb “she is to…remove the clothing of her captivity” (cf. NASB); NRSV “discard her captive’s garb.”

[21:13]  ³¹ tn Heb “sit”; KJV, NASB, NRSV “remain.”

[21:13]  ³² tn Heb “go unto,” a common Hebrew euphemism for sexual relations.

[21:14]  ³³ sn Heb “send her off.” The Hebrew term שִׁלַּחְתָּה (shillakhtah) is a somewhat euphemistic way of referring to divorce, the matter clearly in view here (cf. Deut 22:19, 29; 24:1, 3; Jer 3:1; Mal 2:16). This passage does not have the matter of divorce as its principal objective, so it should not be understood as endorsing divorce generally. It merely makes the point that if grounds for divorce exist (see Deut 24:1-4), and then divorce ensues, the husband could in no way gain profit from it.

[21:14]  ³⁴ tn The Hebrew text uses the infinitive absolute for emphasis, which the translation indicates by the words “in any case.”

[21:14]  ³⁵ tn The Hebrew text includes “for money.” This phrase has not been included in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[21:14]  ³⁶ tn Or perhaps “must not enslave her” (cf. ASV, NAB, NIV, NRSV, NLT); Heb “[must not] be tyrannical over.”

[21:14]  ³⁷ sn You have humiliated her. Since divorce was considered rejection, the wife subjected to it would “lose face” in addition to the already humiliating event of having become a wife by force (21:11-13). Furthermore, the Hebrew verb translated “humiliated” here (עָנָה, ’anah), commonly used to speak of rape (cf. Gen 34:2; 2 Sam 13:12, 14, 22, 32; Judg 19:24), likely has sexual overtones as well. The woman may not be enslaved or abused after the divorce because it would be double humiliation (see also E. H. Merrill, Deuteronomy [NAC], 291).

[21:15]  ³⁸ tn Heb “one whom he loves and one whom he hates.” For the idea of שָׂנֵא (sane’, “hate”) meaning to be rejected or loved less (cf. NRSV “disliked”), see Gen 29:31, 33; Mal 1:2-3. Cf. A. Konkel, NIDOTTE 3:1256-60.

[21:15]  ³⁹ tn Heb “both the one whom he loves and the one whom he hates.” On the meaning of the phrase “one whom he loves and one whom he hates” see the note on the word “other” earlier in this verse. The translation has been simplified for stylistic reasons, to avoid redundancy.

[27:12]  ⁴⁰ tn Heb “do not give me over to the desire of my enemies.”

[27:12]  ⁴¹ tn Heb “for they have risen up against me, lying witnesses and a testifier of violence.” The form יָפֵחַ (yafeakh) is traditionally understood as a verb meaning “snort, breathe out”: “for false witnesses are risen up against me, and such as breathe out cruelty” (KJV; cf. BDB 422 s.v.). A better option is to take the form as a noun meaning “a witness” (or “testifier”). See Prov 6:19; 12:17; 14:5, 25; 19:5, 9, and Hab 2:3.

[35:11]  ⁴² tn Heb “witnesses of violence rise up.”

[35:11]  ⁴³ tn Heb “[that] which I do not know they ask me.”

[26:59]  ⁴⁴ tn Grk “Now the.” Here δέ (de) has not been translated.

[6:13]  ⁴⁵ sn This holy place is a reference to the temple.

[6:13]  ⁴⁶ sn The law refers to the law of Moses. It elaborates the nature of the blasphemy in v. 11. To speak against God’s law in Torah was to blaspheme God (Deut 28:15-19). On the Jewish view of false witnesses, see Exod 19:16-18; 20:16; m. Sanhedrin 3.6; 5.1-5. Stephen’s speech in Acts 7 may indicate why the temple was mentioned.