The Ninth Commandment

False Witness

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Prerequisite/Law

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 20

Track: 101

Dictation Name: RR130BD101

Date: 1960s-70s

We have for a few months now been studying the Ninth Commandment, “Thou shalt not bear false witness.” These various commandments are, under the heading of the Ninth, are variations on the subject of perjury. False witness in every form, we can say generally is prohibited. But these various commandments have subtle variations that are important. It is important, therefore, to study each of these commandments in terms of their variations.

Our text today lays down some of the general principles as an amplification of the Ninth Commandment. One of the best declarations concerning the meaning of the Ninth Commandment was given in the latter years of the 17th century by Dr. Isaac Bell, one of the great divines of the Church of England, who is too little appreciated today. Dr. Bell wrote, “it is in the Hebrew, ‘thou shalt not answer (to which being examined or adjured in judgment) against thy neighbor as a false witness.’ So that primarily means bearing false testimony against our neighbor, especially in matters of capital or of high concern to him is prohibited. Yet that not only this great time, but that all injurious, even extra-judicial prejudicing our neighbor’s reputation and consequently his safety or his welfare in any sort is forbidden. We may collect from that explication of this law, or that parallel law which we have in Leviticus, thou shalt not, it is said there, go up and down as a talebearer among thy people, neither shalt thou stand against the blood of thy neighbor as a talebearer, that is a merchant or trader in ill reports and stories concerning our neighbor, who is prejudiced. Defaming him or detracting from him or breeding in the mind of men an ill opinion of him, which vile and mischievous practice is otherwise under several names condemned and reproved.”

The law against false witness has primary reference to the courts of law; secondarily, with reference to life in a community. As we have seen, the law does not apply when men are seeking to do evil, to destroy a life, or to steal. We are under no obligation then to tell the truth to them. Therefore, Rahab did the right thing when they sought to seize the two men of Israel and slay them, to lie to the king’s guard. Their purpose was evil. So the midwives of Egypt, in lying to Pharaoh, like Rahab, were blessed by God because truth is not to be spoken to evil-doers to enable them to further their evil. Similarly, we have seen that there are privileged communications where it is a sin to testify: communication with a doctor, a minister, or a lawyer.

Now, the law with respect to false witness therefore, has as its basis, justice; that justice be done. We are not to tell the truth if it will lead to injustice—to the murder of a man. If evil men are seeking to slay someone and we tell the {?} where he is, we are then going against the very foundation of this commandment, the purpose of which is to further God’s justice.

Now in our scripture, Exodus 23:1-9, the meaning gives us the broad requirements of justice as they relate to the Ninth Commandment. Several principles appear in this particular law. Others, elsewhere as we shall see on subsequent weeks.

First of all, a godly man, according to our scripture, must move in terms of God’s Law. Not the mob or a multitude, because the spirit of the mob, however powerful in governing man, is rarely {?} the Law of God. Therefore, “Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil; neither shalt thou speak in a cause to decline after many to wrest judgment:” in other words, our witness must further judgment, or justice, not pervert it. Therefore, we are under no obligation to give any kind of testimony or the truth to anyone who is seeking to wrest judgment, to do evil. It is not the power of man or the will of man which should govern us, but the power of God.

Second, just as we cannot be governed by a mob, so we cannot be governed by personal considerations, that is pity for a man because he is poor (verse 3) “Neither shalt thou countenance a poor man in his cause,” nor friendliness to the rich, “Thou shalt not wrest the judgment of thy poor in his cause” [verse 6] by favoring the rich. We must not wrest judgment by favoring someone because they are young, therefore we feel sorry for them because they are so young, or because they are old and we feel sorry for them, what will happen to them because they are so old. We are to be governed by judgment—justice. Bribes are, the scripture tells us, an even greater distortion of law because they blind a man to the real issues so that he gives the false witness, whether he is a judge or a witness, as verses 7 and 8 make clear. Moreover, as verse 9 reveals, a stranger is to receive the same justice as a friend, and an enemy (according to verses 4 and 5) is due the same justice and assistance in real need as a friend.

Third, malicious witness is condemned by our scripture as are false reports. Verse 1 is very precise here and the following verses of course, give instances of it. There is a close and necessary correlation between words and deed. The advocates of free speech are utterly irresponsible here. There cannot be, and never has been, totally free speech. And people who talk about free speech today have made a fetish of it. There is no free speech in a crowded theatre for anyone to shout, “Fire!” It is punishable by law. Words have consequences. It is not permissible in the name of free speech to talk about killing the president as a Black Panther did recently. Nor is it permissible, nor should it be permissible in the name of free speech to spread false reports concerning men. Free speech has been made a slogan in our day by dishonest men. If you countenance free speech in its absolute sense, you then have to countenance, as they are demanding, free actions in the same absolute sense, that men are free to say and do as they please. There is a correlation between words and actions. Malice in word means malice in deed also. A dishonest man is a corrupt witness and a dangerous friend. Thus, free speech is not the Biblical Law. Responsible speech is.

Neither is absolute truth-telling at all times, and at all places and all conditions the Biblical Law. Truth telling should further judgment, not to cooperate with evil men when they seek to commit murder or to rob and to defraud men. It is a sin to tell them the truth.

Words, thus, are important. How important? Now in the ancient world, men believed that words had a magical power. As a result, because of their faith that word and act are creatively related, they believed that the spoken word had a divine power. Paganism was humanistic. Humanism holds. Of course, that man is god. And therefore, whenever you have Humanism, man’s word has creative power. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. He said, “Let there be light,” and there was light, because God being God, His Word creates, instantaneously, totally, perfectly.

Now paganism, because it believed that man is his own god, because it had submitted to the temptation of Satan, ye shall be as gods, knowing (determining for yourself) what is good and evil, man therefore was claiming by submitting to Satan’s temptation to be as god, to have a creative word. As a result, you find in ancient Paganism, the search for the word. And all kinds of ancient stories, religious in origin but now fairy tales, give us that magic word search; open sesame, abracadabra and other words in various languages and traditions, all of which witness to the fact that sinful man having declared he is god, is in search of the creative word whereby he could say the word and it would be done. This of course, we still have in occultism and in secret societies with their passwords.

The background of the various lodges with their secret passwords is the pagan belief that these secret passwords have magical powers. And you do find, for example, in the older masonic writings, which are rather soft-pedaled now, certain magic words which could only be pronounced on certain occasions and which had supernatural powers, supposedly.

Now modern Humanism also makes man its god. And therefore, it is not without (very definitely not without) this vain belief in the power of man through a creative word; through a magic word as it were. As a result, your typical liberal and leftist, prefers a great praise-maker to anyone else. Hence the popularity of someone like President Kennedy who was an impotent, futile president, but very much loved by the liberals, as against Johnson who did more than any other liberal president, but had no gift in praise-making. Stevenson, another very impotent man (Adlai Stevenson) was also very much idolized because of his verbalizing. This kind of thing is a witness to their belief in word, in the creative word, man being his own god.

But a very much clearer example of this is the faith of Humanists in the power of rationally-conceived plans and ideas, especially since {?} and Hegel. Modern man, claiming to be his own god, believes in the power of the word—man’s word. The real is the rational, and the rational is the real, if you’re Pagan. All man has to do is to arrive at the rational, the logical, or the scientific; however he defines the creative word of man. And then ipso-facto, we have arrived at the modern equivalent of open sesame or abracadabra. Hence, the liberal belief in the power of legislation. You pass a law and suddenly it solves (they believe) everything. And so the Civil Rights Law was passed and it was believed that instant utopia was here. And somehow, they feel that some evil elements in the government and in society are responsible for frustrating everything, because this was the magic word! And on the one hand, the students riot against the government because somehow they are frustrating the magic word, and the government clobbers businessmen because they are frustrating the magic word, this Civil Rights Act. A believe in the omnipotence in man’s word, because man is the god of the new religion; the word is the act. As a result, the Humanistic intellectuals assumed that once their rational or scientific plans are conceived, they need only to be declared to become a reality. It is their word. They are the ones who, having realized themselves to be the gods, the elite planners, they have only to pronounce the word, and it is a divine creative word.

Now the biblical position concerning speech, thought, witness, is radically different from this. Man, because he is created in the image of God, speaks not a creative word, not a divine word, but an analogical word. What does that mean? It means that man can think God’s thoughts after Him and this is his function. Man’s power therefore is in thinking God’s thought after Him and obeying those words. Man exercises power therefore under God to the extent that he speaks and acts in terms of God’s creative work. Hence, it is wicked for men to take the Ninth Commandment and to divorce it from God, from God’s justice, from God’s total work and say, I’m supposed to tell the truth even if a man comes and he wants to know where my wife is to rape her. I’ve heard a minister say this. This is to divorce the Word from God. “Thou shalt not bear false witness” is in terms of God’s world, God’s justice, God’s purpose for furthering His kingdom: man exercising dominion under Him.

The temptation of Satan was, as we have seen, that man could speak his own divine creative word, ‘ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.’ Man will, according to Satan, when he speaks his own word and cuts himself loose entirely from God, establish his own divine word, speak and declare for himself what is good and evil and order all reality in terms of his own works. In the world of Satan, man’s word is the act and the new world is born when man totally separates himself by word from God. But man was created in the image of God and the word he speaks must be in terms of God and of His image.

Speech is important to man. Two of the Ten Commandments have to do with speech—the Third and the Ninth. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; neither shalt thou bear false witness. When man gives false witness, when he takes the name of the Lord in vain or acts in violation of it, man then denies the image of God in favor of Satan’s claim that man makes himself.

And of course, this is precisely what modern philosophy is doing. Jean-Paul Sartre says that man must, by his own creative word, create himself out of nothing. He has devoted his major work, Being and Nothingness to declare that man has no essence. Man cannot be defined. Man must create himself out of nothing and then define his own essence in terms of his own creative work. Man makes himself, Sartre holds, in terms of the, of his own image as he visualizes himself. Sartre then, is affirming Satan’s position, that wherever man gives true witness in the full sense of the word, there he grows in terms of the restored image of God.

Our scripture makes it clear that faithful witness is a part of a way of life, a spirit of justice as defined by God. Faithful witness transcends the personal issues such as friendship or enmity. It has resonance not to us as individuals, but to God and to His purposes. Truth telling may therefore be detrimental to us, but it must further God’s justice. It can never be used to bring about injustice. God’s Law must govern our speech, not man’s ideas of free speech or truth telling. As Dr. Van Til has said, God is the original, and man is the derivative, because man is the derivative, therefore man’s every standard, including his content of speech must be derived from God. Van Til has further said, “If one does not make human knowledge fully dependent upon the original self-knowledge and consequent revelation of God to man, then man will have to seek knowledge within himself as the final reference point.”

Translated into the world of law, this means that the point of reference in speech is not man, it is God. The law does not permit us to use ourselves as the standard. The analogical word means the obedient word. The obedient word, the words of Rahab were obedient words, obedient to God, not to man. The words of the midwives of Egypt were obedient words, obedient to God, not to Pharaoh. Both of them risked their lives in being obedient to God and disobedient to man and David so defined the man who gave true witness: he that sweareth to his own hurt and changes not. David in Psalm 15 gives us the significance of true witness in a commentary on the commandments. David declared,

“1 Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? Who shall dwell in thy holy hill?

2 He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart.

3 He that backbiteth not with his tongue, nor doeth evil to his neighbour, nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbour.

4 In whose eyes a vile person is contemned; but he honoureth them that fear the LORD. He that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not.

5 He that putteth not out his money to usury, nor taketh reward against the innocent. He that doeth these things shall never be moved.”

Notice how David speaks of the man who bears true witness. It begins, first of all in the heart. He speaketh the truth in his heart, in his relationship to the Lord. The commandment has reference primarily to God and to His justice, to His requirements of us, not the requirements of men. Thou shalt not bear false witness. Thus, saith the Lord.

Let us pray.

Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, by Thy Grace, grant that we ever speak the truth in our hearts unto Thee. And day-by-day in our relationships with neighbor and enemy, be governed by Thy Law and Thy justice. Grant that we move never in the fear of man but in the fear of Thee, that we may be blessed by The and amidst all the changes and pressures of this world, my never be moved, but stand fast in Thy righteousness and truth. Bless us to this purpose in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Are there any questions now, first of all with respect to our lesson?

Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Virtually all philosophy today is governed by Humanism and is existential. Existentialism feels that the only truth is that which comes out of man. So not only the secular philosophers, but virtually all the religious philosophers today feel that if you want God’s Word, you look into man, that man’s word is the only divine word.

I had with me the bulletin of the Religious Book Club, the most recent one, and their selection is a book by Sam Keene, and the title, To a Dancing God. And it is interesting to see how Keene begins his book. He writes, “I, Sam Keene wrote this book. The voice that speaks to you in these essays is mine. It is not the voice of philosophy or theology or modern man. What I offer is a series of personal reflections upon issues, problems and crises, with which I have had to wrestle. The conclusions I have reached are not inescapable. Both my doubts and my certainties may be too intimately connected to unique elements in my autobiography to be typical of that nebulous creature called ‘modern man.’ When I speak with assurance, it is because I have discovered come elements of a style of life that are satisfying for me. However, the affirmations I make have no authority unless you choose to add you voice to mine. This is how it is with me. I cannot say how it is with you. Nevertheless I would invite you to replace the ‘I’ of these essays with ‘we’ when you find yourselves in agreement.” Notice—nothing about truth. He is looking, he says, and he feels he has found a style of life that agrees with him, that is his own creative work. His only hope is that he can help you find your style of life that will be your creative work.

Now, this is modern philosophy, religious and non-religious (or secular) with very few exceptions.

[Audience] In raising that same thing, … {?} how do you … {?} How do you execute it? .. {?}

[Rushdoony] What you have to do is to push people to the obvious implications of their position. This is called Negative Apologetics. You say the implications of your position are such-and-so. They lead to total anarchy. No truth binding man to man, overruling and governing over man. If you deny God and His infallible Word, this is the end of all thought. And so finally, you have a purely personal truth. Finally, you end up in the problem that characterized Jean-Paul Sartre, the Existentialist. To him, hell is other people, because if he’s a god, how is he going to live (as I’ve pointed out before) with other gods—the rest of us? And you see, once you get away from God’s Word as the infallible Word, and true witness being defined only in terms of God’s Word, you end up in anarchy. You have no way of discerning right and wrong.

And it is interesting that the other day in Hamburg, Germany, Billy Graham, who has cut loose really, from the infallible Word, when he was asked why we wouldn’t condemn Communism, Graham said he refused to discuss Communism, although he had once been known as a great foe of that system. For years, I have not spoken about that, he said, I cannot go around the world and say who is right and who is not right. Of course you can’t, if you have no infallible word, no Law, you have no way of saying who’s right and who’s wrong.

But if you have the infallible Law-Word of God, then you have the basis.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] This was recent at {?} der Spiegel and translated and it’s in a news brief by Robert Davis. I don’t know the date of it. Someone sent it to me recently.

I’ll put it—I’ll try to remember and if you’ll remind me I’ll put it in one of the next Chalcedon Report as a footnote so that everyone can use it.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. Very good.

Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, they believe also, than man can, through their methodology, come to a creative word, so it is a form of Humanism, and it believes that they can, by their devises, by their means, ascertain this creative word for man, a particular method, a particular way of life, a particular style of living.

Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. Very well put. Communication has become the key word for our generation because once you forsake God’s absolute standard, communication breaks down. People use words in terms of their style of life, and so they continually redefine everything.

We have seen in the most recent edition of the dictionary, that there is no longer an acknowledged absolute standard of grammar or of anything. Well, communication therefore collapses. It {?}. You cannot speak to people if words have a totally different meaning to them.

Some few years ago, I was speaking to a minister who was very much a, a devotee of this modern existentialist thinking. And I knew that he was anything but orthodox, but he was deluding a congregation that was solidly orthodox and reformed into believing that he was. So I challenged him on his idea of resurrection. He claimed to believe that and the virgin birth and so on. And after about four hours of argument, I finally got it out of him that he did not believe in what the Bible taught. But he thought I was being arbitrary in that I was insisting there was only one way to use these ideas and words and teachings. They could be emptied of their Biblical meaning and used in a totally different context.

Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] … which?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] … of, of all scripture? In six years thou shalt sow thy land and shalt gather in the fruit thereof, but the seventh year thou shalt let it rest and lie still.

Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, the principle there is the principle of the Sabbath. The land needs a rest. Everything we have ever learned in recent years concerning the soil indicates that the earth does need its sabbath, like everything else. And the productivity of the earth goes down progressively as men do not give the earth a rest.

Some years ago, when I was on the Indian reservation, there was a very fine soil conservation man who came there and subsequently became a Christian and then left the government service because he felt as a Christian he could not stay there. But he told me emphatically, that a rest for the earth is a necessity, in order to revive the soil, to allow the micro-organisms an opportunity to work. And his program for the reservation was that they rotate their range, and allow every year, one section to stand idle, for the grass to come up and go down, and the soil could recuperate. And he said that this was a tremendous danger, the fact that we no longer apply the sabbath in this basic aspect. You see, today, our idea of the sabbath is very limited—that is among people who claim to believe in the sabbath. They apply it to themselves personally and to {?} and so on but the basic idea of the sabbath is rest—so it means rest for man, it means rest for the earth. It means rest from debt, so that we cannot contract long-term debt. Its basic idea is rest that there might be renewal.

Any other questions?

Yes.

[Audience] … you have.. {?} … constitutional.. {?}

[Rushdoony] I don’t quite…

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Oh, no, no, no; that didn’t apply there. No. No.

Ah, it didn’t apply to people. It applied to work, to resting from work, and it applied to allowing the earth to rest, and God said that the land would be more productive if they gave it a rest.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] No. That is altogether wrong, altogether wrong, and it’s something that has no background in rabbinic teaching. He’s just invented that on his own.

Yes.

We’re beginning to see the effects of giving the earth no rest. It takes more and more pesticides to keep the trees and vines and vegetables going because they’re so lacking in any resistance and it’s because the soil has been so progressively mined. It’s not been given its rest, just as we, if we work around the clock, day after day without a rest year in and year out; it’s going to tell on us. So it tells on the soil if it’s not given its sabbath rest.

Yes.

[Audience] {?} … or is there never a rest… {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, they had their rest. This is where man is working the field.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] What? I can’t hear you.

[Audience] {?}

[Laughter]

[Rushdoony] The use of a snail. It’d be better to ask the Lord that question, because He is omniscient and I’m not. But there is nothing for which we have not found a use, and the snail has his value too. In areas where vegetation is very lush, he has his important part in keeping things going. You don’t have the snail doing as much damage and he’s taken care of by other creatures in an area where you have a better balance of nature. It’s where man comes in that he gets out of hand.

Our time is just about up. Is there one more question?

Yes.

[Audience] Two things: one, until the last century, {?}a neighbor’s rental contract {?}Dutch property. {?} and they built it in mandatory, 1/7 goes to …. {?} for a decent contract for the farmland. It wasn’t required to most{?}contracts, {?} cultivation. {?} we realize {?} dense population {?} planting before modern plumbing

The other thing, with regards to matters today, you stressed the point, {?} personal usage of language and the lack of {?} of language, so that each man applies to his own terms. We also need to be aware of the other side of the {?} coin, today what you’re seeing from opponents of the so-called {?}First Theory and I’ve seen it {?} novelty, {?} a universal force creates common {?} and common languages so that there’s a great {?} today. Ah, it says that Daniel borrowed {?} all over the world, the mere {?}invention of computers all over the world gives the whole world a new language and therefore a new foundation for a one-world {?} Now is that {?} personal… it would be a personal language {?} the repeating of it {?} of the {?}. But it’s interesting that {?} a personal order you can have a unified language, so the {?} would go away. {?} be approved in getting all countries relative to the {?}. But if you press them on the issue of economic {?} they say the new technology provides the universal language.

[Rushdoony] Yes, because you see, the planners have come up with their technology, with the magic word, the ‘open sesame,’ the ‘abracadabra.’ Man’s creative word, which is the new law and the new standard. This is why in the Soviet Union, the schools first of all adopted Dewey’s progressivism for twelve years, in order to destroy everything in the minds of an entire generation, in the way of an absolute truth that God had and then they junked it totally, because now they have the new technological word, man’s creative word, to teach. It’s the same thesis as that which you cited.

And the point you just made with regard to the Dutch custom, ah, this type of obedience to Biblical Laws was once far more common than we realize into fairly recent years. But we have so thoroughly overthrown it in recent years that we have worked to obliterate any knowledge that not too long ago, men in Europe and in American, men observed God’s Laws, even with respect to the land and its rest.

Well our time is up now. Let’s bow our heads for the benediction.

And now, go in peace. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit bless you and keep you, guide and protect you this day and always. Amen.