Read the commandment slowly.
“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour.” (Exodus 20:16)
It doesn’t say “you shall not lie.” It says something narrower. And stranger: you shall not bear false witness against your neighbour. That’s courtroom language. So is there a general prohibition on lying in the Ten Commandments at all—and if there is, why did God word it like this?
There’s a second problem waiting further down the road. The Bible contains people who deceived, and they seem to be commended for it.
What the Words Actually Say
THE HEBREW BEHIND THE COMMANDMENT
The phrase is ed shaqer—a witness of falsehood. The verb, anah be-, means to testify against someone. Both are legal terms.
The Deuteronomy version of the commandment uses a different word: ed shav, a witness of emptiness (Deuteronomy 5:20). That’s the same word as “in vain” in the third commandment—the word covering emptiness, worthlessness and falsehood together.
The link is deliberate. Lifting up God’s name for nothing and lifting up your voice against a neighbour for nothing are the same crime committed in two directions.
So the commandment’s primary target is perjury: lying in a legal setting in a way that damages someone.
Does that mean everything outside a courtroom is permitted? No—and Scripture itself closes the gap immediately. 3 chapters later, in the case law applying the Decalogue, God says: “You shall not spread a false report. You shall not join hands with a wicked man to be a malicious witness… nor shall you bear witness in a lawsuit, siding with the many, so as to pervert justice… Keep far from a false charge” (Exodus 23:1–7).
Notice how quickly it widens. A false report passed on. Joining a crowd. Going along with the majority. Staying near a charge you suspect is untrue. The commandment names the gravest form and then the law spreads outward from it, exactly as we’ve seen with every other commandment in this series.
Why Courtroom Language?
Because in the ancient world, testimony was the entire justice system.
There were no forensics. No documents for most people, no records, no cameras, no independent investigators. When a man was accused, what stood between him and execution was what witnesses said in front of the elders at the gate. Nothing else.
Israel’s law built two remarkable protections around that vulnerability.
- No conviction on one voice. “Only on the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses shall a charge be established” (Deuteronomy 19:15). A single accuser, however respectable, couldn’t destroy anyone.
- The false witness receives what he intended. If a witness was proved to have lied, “you shall do to him as he had meant to do to his brother” (Deuteronomy 19:19). A man who committed perjury to have someone executed was executed.
That second law is startling, and it tells us how God ranks this sin. The false witness isn’t treated as someone who told an untruth. He’s treated as someone who attempted the crime he was describing.
Naboth’s vineyard
Scripture gives us the case study, and it’s worth knowing.
Ahab wanted a man’s vineyard. Naboth refused to sell. Jezebel arranged a public fast, seated Naboth prominently, and placed two worthless men opposite him to testify he had cursed God and the king. The court did the rest. Naboth was taken out and stoned, and Ahab went down to take possession of the vineyard (1 Kings 21:1–16).
Every legal requirement was met. Two witnesses, as the law demanded. A proper assembly. A formal charge. And a man was murdered and robbed by a process that followed the rules to a nicety.
That’s why the ninth commandment sits where it does. It’s the mechanism by which a society can kill people legally.
Why Does This Earn a Place in the 10?
1. Because it’s how the other commandments get broken by proxy
Look back at the 3 commandments immediately before this one. Life. Marriage. Property.
Every one of them can be destroyed by words alone, by someone who never raises a hand. Naboth lost his property and his life without Jezebel touching either. A marriage can be ended by a rumour. A reputation can be dismantled in an afternoon by a person who was never in the room.
The ninth commandment is the one through which the sixth, seventh and eighth can be broken at a distance.
2. Because a name’s a possession you cannot get back
“A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches” (Proverbs 22:1). Scripture treats reputation as something a person genuinely owns.
But it’s a strange kind of property, because it can’t be restored the way stolen goods can. In the previous post we saw Israel’s law dealt with theft by restitution—repay, and repay with a penalty. There’s no equivalent for slander. You can print a retraction; you can’t un-tell a story. Everyone who heard the first version will remember it, and most will never hear the second.
Kevin DeYoung observes this is the sin people find easiest to commit and hardest to repair. That combination is exactly why it needed a commandment.
3. Because God is truth, and lying imitates someone else
Scripture says God cannot lie (Titus 1:2), that He isn’t a man that He should lie (Numbers 23:19), and that it is impossible for Him to do so (Hebrews 6:18).
And it identifies the alternative with unusual bluntness. Jesus, speaking of the devil, says: “When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44). The Holy Spirit, by contrast, is called the Spirit of truth (John 16:13).
There’s no neutral ground in this commandment. Every act of speech resembles one or the other.
4. Because a community can’t run without reliable words
Remove trustworthy speech and consider what stops working. Contracts. Courts. Marriage vows. Medicine. Journalism. Science. This means large numbers of people trust reports they cannot personally verify. Preaching. Friendship.
None of these survive a general collapse in truthfulness.
The Many Faces of False Witness
The Westminster Larger Catechism’s treatment of this commandment is famously long, and reading it is an uncomfortable experience. It lists not only lying but flattery, evil suspicion, exaggerating small faults, unnecessary disclosure of someone’s weaknesses, even receiving a bad report too readily.
| FORM | WHAT IT IS |
|---|---|
| Perjury and false accusation | The commandment’s primary target: testimony that damages an innocent person |
| Slander | Saying what is untrue about someone who is not present to answer |
| Gossip | Saying what may well be true, to people who have no business hearing it |
| The half-truth | A statement technically accurate and designed to leave a false impression |
| Flattery | Telling someone what they want to hear—“a man who flatters his neighbour spreads a net for his feet” (Proverbs 29:5) |
| Silence | Failing to speak when speech is required. Israel’s law made this a guilt-bearing offence (Leviticus 5:1) |
| Repeating without checking | Passing on what you have not verified, which Exodus 23:1 forbids in as many words |
| Misrepresenting an opponent | Answering an argument nobody made, because the real one is harder |
| Lying about yourself | The inflated CV, the curated profile, the testimony that improves each time it is told |
2 of those deserve a second look, because they’re rarely named as sins at all.
Flattery is false witness delivered as a gift. It feels like kindness and functions as manipulation, and Proverbs treats it as a trap laid at somebody’s feet. A church culture in which nobody is ever told the truth about their work, their preaching or their behaviour isn’t a gentle culture. It is a dishonest one.
Silence is the one most of us use. You’re in a conversation, something untrue is being said about an absent person, and saying nothing costs nothing. Israel’s law was blunt about it: a person who hears and doesn’t speak “shall bear his iniquity”. The commandment isn’t only about what you say.
Why this commandment is harder now than it has ever been
An Israelite might speak to a few hundred people in a lifetime, and any rumour he started had to travel on foot. It moved slowly enough to be checked, and it moved among people who’d still be neighbours next year.
Every person reading this carries a printing press. A sentence written in irritation at 11 at night can reach more people before breakfast than Naboth’s accusers reached in their lives, and it reaches them stripped of tone, context and the possibility of reply. The friction that used to slow a false report has been almost entirely removed.
There’s a second change, and it’s more serious. A growing number of people now treat truth as a resource rather than an obligation—something that serves a cause, wins an argument or protects a side. On that view, a claim is judged by whom it helps rather than by whether it corresponds to reality. This isn’t a modern refinement of ethics. It is precisely what Jezebel did, dressed in newer clothes.
The Hard Case: Is Deception Ever Right?
Now the problem we flagged at the start. And we’re not going to dodge it.
- The Hebrew midwives were ordered by Pharaoh to kill newborn boys. They didn’t, and when questioned they gave an account that wasn’t true. Scripture’s verdict: “So God dealt well with the midwives… And because the midwives feared God, He gave them families” (Exodus 1:20–21).
- Rahab hid Israel’s spies and sent their pursuers in the wrong direction. She appears twice in the New Testament as an example of faith and of works (Hebrews 11:31; James 2:25).
The modern version writes itself. Soldiers at the door; a family hidden upstairs; a question asked.
Christians typically answer this in one of 3 ways.
| VIEW | WHAT IT HOLDS | ITS DIFFICULTY |
|---|---|---|
| Always wrong | Lying is never permitted. The midwives and Rahab were commended for their courage and faith, not for their words. God blesses imperfect people. | The texts commend them without qualification, and never hint the deception was the flaw in an otherwise good act. |
| The lesser evil | When 2 duties genuinely conflict, you must choose the weightier one. The lie is still a wrong, though a non-culpable one. | It requires affirming a category of sin God doesn’t hold against us. This is hard to locate in Scripture. |
| Not “against your neighbour” | The commandment forbids false witness against a neighbour. Deception aimed at protecting the innocent from someone bent on murder isn’t against a neighbour at all—it is defence of one. | It can be stretched. Every liar can be tempted to reclassify his situation as an emergency. |
John Frame has argued the third view at length. The wording of the commandment isn’t accidental, and the phrase “against your neighbour” does real work. A murderer at the door has forfeited any claim on information he intends to use for killing; withholding it from him isn’t a sin against him but a duty towards the person he’s hunting.
Guardrails, because this can be abused
If you hold the third view, hold it with these limits.
It applies to protecting the innocent from unjust harm, not to protecting ourselves from embarrassment, cost or inconvenience.
It’s a genuine emergency category, not a sliding scale. The moment we find ourselves reasoning towards it for something ordinary, we’ve strayed.
It never covers deception that damages a third party.
It doesn’t cover the far commoner version: the shading, softening and selective account we use daily. That’s straightforward: it’s what the commandment forbids.
And note what isn’t deception at all: fiction, drama, jokes, sporting feints, military manoeuvre, undercover investigation, a surprise party.
What the Commandment Requires
Paul gives the positive form directly, and adds a reason that’s easy to skip past.
“Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbour, for we are members one of another.” (Ephesians 4:25)
The reason he gives for truthfulness isn’t that honesty is a fine quality. It’s that Christians belong to each other. Lying to a fellow believer is a body part deceiving another body part: it’s not merely wrong but absurd.
And a few verses earlier he supplies the balancing clause that keeps truth from becoming cruelty: “speaking the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15). Truth that’s deployed to wound isn’t obedience to this commandment. It’s a different way of breaking it.
| WHAT IT FORBIDS | WHAT IT THEREFORE REQUIRES |
|---|---|
| False testimony and accusation | Speaking up for the accused, and for those with no voice |
| Slander and gossip | Defending the reputation of people who’re not in the room |
| Half-truths and misleading impressions | Speech plain enough that no one’s left believing something false |
| Flattery | Honest encouragement, and honest correction |
| Repeating what we have not checked | Verifying before passing on, and saying so when we don’t know |
| Silence when truth is needed | The courage to speak, including when it costs something |
| Concealing our own errors | Correcting them as publicly as we made them |
| Misrepresenting those we disagree with | Stating an opponent’s case so well that he’d recognise it |
The final row deserves a word, because it applies to us before it applies to anyone else. A website that exists to defend Christian truth has no business defending it with invented quotations, unchecked statistics, or an opponent’s argument reshaped into something easier to knock down. Every such shortcut wins the paragraph and loses the commandment. If a position can only be defeated by misrepresenting it, the honest course is to say so and keep working.
Martin Luther’s summary of this commandment in his catechism has never been improved on. He said we shouldn’t betray or slander our neighbour, but should defend him, speak well of him, and put the kindest construction on everything he does. That last phrase is the whole commandment explained.
Convicted by False Witnesses
The ninth commandment killed Jesus.
Matthew records it without decoration: “the chief priests and the whole council were seeking false testimony against Jesus that they might put him to death… at last two came forward” (Matthew 26:59–60). 2 witnesses, as the law required. The correct procedure, used to reach a murder.
And the man who is truth itself—“I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6)—said almost nothing in His own defence. He didn’t correct the record. Isaiah had prophesied He wouldn’t: like a sheep before its shearers, silent (Isaiah 53:7).
There’s one more turn, and it’s where this commandment finally lands. Scripture calls Satan the accuser of the brothers, who accuses them day and night (Revelation 12:10). The last and greatest false witness is also a prosecutor. And the Christian’s answer isn’t a better defence but a different advocate: “if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1).
How This Commandment Is Actually Kept
Not by never saying anything false, though that would be a start.
It’s kept by slowing down. Most damage is done at speed—the message forwarded before it’s checked, the remark made because the moment was there, the version of events that improved slightly in the telling because it landed better.
It’s kept by caring more about the person than the effect of the story. That’s the practical test, and it’s a hard one. Ask why you want to say it. If the answer involves how you will look, stop.
And it’s kept by becoming someone others can safely be absent around—a person in whose company no reputation is ever quietly reduced. That’s a rarer thing than it should be, and people notice it.
One habit is worth adopting above all others. Before you repeat something about a person, imagine them standing within earshot as you say it. Not as a guilt device, but as an accuracy device—because the version you’d tell with them present is almost always the true one. And, chances are, the version you’d tell without them is the one that has grown.
Next in this series: the tenth commandment. Having protected life, marriage, property and reputation, the Decalogue turns inward—and forbids something no one else can see.
Tough Questions, Honest Answers
Is a “white lie” really a sin?
Yes, and the label is part of the problem—it’s designed to make a thing sound harmless while you do it. Most white lies exist to spare the speaker rather than the hearer: they avoid an awkward conversation, a refused invitation, or an admission of forgetfulness. That’s precisely what this commandment forbids, and it’s a very long way from the emergency category discussed above. The useful discovery is that almost every white lie has a truthful alternative that’s equally kind: “I’d rather not answer”, “I cannot make it”, “I had forgotten, I am sorry”. Kindness and honesty aren’t actually competing, though laziness often pretends they are.
Is gossip really wrong if what I am saying is true?
Yes. The commandment forbids false witness, but Scripture addresses gossip separately and severely—a whisperer separates close friends (Proverbs 16:28), and Paul lists gossips among those whose behaviour marks a society in decay (Romans 1:29). Truth is a necessary condition for right speech, not a sufficient one. The relevant questions are whether the hearer needs to know, whether you’d say it with the person present, and what you’re hoping the information will accomplish. If the honest answer to the last one involves how you will be seen, the truth of the content will not save the act.
Does this commandment mean I must always say everything I know?
No. Truthfulness governs what you say; it doesn’t oblige you to disclose everything to everyone. Confidences are meant to be kept, and Proverbs commends the person of a faithful spirit who conceals a matter (Proverbs 11:13). Professional confidentiality, pastoral confidence and simple discretion are duties rather than exceptions. The line falls where silence itself creates a false impression that harms someone: declining to answer is legitimate, while allowing an innocent person to be blamed because speaking would cost you isn’t. There are also limits on confidentiality—a secret that conceals ongoing harm to someone isn’t a secret you’re entitled to keep.
Is writing fiction lying? What about telling children about Father Christmas?
Fiction isn’t lying, because nobody is deceived. A novel, a parable or a play makes no claim to be reporting events, and Jesus Himself taught in stories about people who never existed. The Father Christmas question is different because it involves a genuine assertion to someone who believes it, and Christians answer it differently in good conscience. Some families treat it as shared make-believe the child is gradually let in on; others avoid it, concerned that a child who learns one story was untrue may wonder about the other one they were told at Christmas. The second concern is worth taking seriously, and no parent should be made to feel dishonest either way.
I have slandered someone. How do I make it right?
The pattern is the same as with theft: go to the people who heard it. A private apology to the person you spoke about is necessary but not sufficient, because the damage is sitting in other people’s heads and only you can go and remove it. Correct it as publicly as you spread it, without excuses and without a version that quietly justifies why you said it. Expect this to be humiliating, and do it anyway—the humiliation is roughly proportionate to what you inflicted. Where the matter is serious or legal, take counsel first, and be aware that repairing a reputation is slower and less complete than repaying money, which is exactly why the commandment is there.
Is it wrong to plead “not guilty” in court if I actually did it?
This is narrower than it first appears. A not-guilty plea is a formal procedural step meaning “I put the prosecution to proof”, and in most legal systems it’s understood by everyone present as exactly that rather than as a personal assertion of innocence. Requiring the state to prove its case is a protection built into the law for everyone’s sake, and using it isn’t the same as testifying falsely. What a Christian may not do is lie on oath, fabricate an alibi, procure false witnesses, or let another person carry the blame. And where guilt is clear, honesty before the court is usually both the right course and the wiser one, since courts treat genuine acknowledgement more gently than a defence that collapses.
Am I breaking this commandment when I forward news or messages I haven’t verified?
Possibly, and this may be the most common breach of the ninth commandment in the world today. Exodus 23:1 couldn’t be more directly applicable: “You shall not spread a false report.” The person who forwards a message without checking hasn’t invented anything, but has lent their credibility to something they don’t know to be true. And among friends and family that credibility is precisely what makes it spread. 3 habits deal with most of it: check before forwarding, be more sceptical of things that flatter your existing convictions, and be willing to say publicly you got something wrong. Christians should be the hardest people in any group to fool and the easiest to correct.
CONTINUE THE SERIES: THE TEN COMMANDMENTS
This post is part of our series working through the Ten Commandments. It follows Why God Gave the 10 Commandments—And Why These 10?, The First Commandment: Why Does God Demand Exclusive Worship?, The Second Commandment: Why Does God Forbid Idols?, The Third Commandment: What Does “Taking God’s Name in Vain” Mean?, The Fourth Commandment: Why Did God Command a Day of Rest?, The Fifth Commandment: Why Must We Honour Our Parents?, The Sixth Commandment: Why Does God Forbid Murder?, The Seventh Commandment: Why Does God Care About Adultery?, and The Eighth Commandment: Why Does God Forbid Stealing?.
Related Reads
- Why God Gave the 10 Commandments—And Why These 10?
- The First Commandment: Why Does God Demand Exclusive Worship?
- The Second Commandment: Why Does God Forbid Idols?
- The Third Commandment: What Does “Taking God’s Name in Vain” Mean?
- The Fourth Commandment: Why Did God Command a Day of Rest?
- The Fifth Commandment: Why Must We Honour Our Parents?
- The Sixth Commandment: Why Does God Forbid Murder?
- The Seventh Commandment: Why Does God Care About Adultery?
- The Eighth Commandment: Why Does God Forbid Stealing?
- The Tenth Commandment: Why Does God Care About What We Desire?
- What Should Christians Do if Asked to Lie to a Client? A Biblical Answer
