The Ninth Commandment

Slander as Theft

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Prerequisite/Law

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 15

Track: 106

Dictation Name: RR130BF106

Date: 1960s-70s

Our scripture this lesson is Leviticus 19:11. Leviticus 19:11, “Slander as Theft.”

Leviticus 19:11, “Ye shall not steal, neither deal falsely, neither lie one to another.”

This very brief statement is important to understand because there are several things that appear in this passage that are of tremendous significance to Biblical Law. First of all it is important to recognize that the phrase ‘deal falsely’ is rendered by the Berkeley Version and other translations as ‘cheat.’ And the passage can be rendered, ‘ye shall not steal, neither cheat (or defraud), neither lie to (nor slander) one another.’

Now this passage is interesting is that it reveals a connection between the Eighth and the Ninth Commandments. It cites two violations of the Eighth Commandment and links them with the Ninth. Ye shall not steal, nor cheat or defraud very obviously has reference to the commandment, “Thou shalt not steal.” Neither lie to one another (nor be guilty of slander, it can be rendered) has very clear reference to the Ninth Commandment, “Thou shalt not bear false witness” concerning thy neighbor.

Two commandments, thus, are brought together in a single sentence. Moreover, there is a transition from the one to the other. In other words, first of all, ye shall not steal. Very clearly, the Eighth Commandment. Ye shall not cheat, or defraud or deal falsely. Now here the line is very definitely between the two commandments in that fraud involves both theft and false witness. So in every case of fraud, both commandments are violated and the two are very closely linked. And then the third, slander or lying, is very definitely the Ninth Commandment.

What this law does is to show us very clearly that the law is interlocking. Every commandment is basically related to every other commandment. And the line between one commandment and the other is at best at times a very slim one. Every sin therefore, is a violation of God’s Law. And God’s Law ultimately is basically one: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” And the various commandments give us the ways in which having other gods before us, making ourselves and our will our own god, how we sin against God—by bearing false witness, stealing, coveting, committing adultery, murdering, and so on. In all these ways we are setting aside the one True God and establishing our will as god.

False witness is thus linked very specifically in this commandment with theft; and theft with false witness. A thief, after all gains wealth which he claims is his own by defrauding others. So that he continually bears false witness in that he presents to the world an appearance with the wealth he has gained that is not rightfully his. He is living off the substance of another man. Similarly, false witness is theft in that it robs a man of his reputation, his standing in the community and his peace of mind.

Slander is very heavily denounced in scripture:

o       For example, in Proverbs 11:9 we read, “An hypocrite with his mouth destroyeth his neighbor.”

o        In Titus 3:1, 2, “1Put them in mind to…2speak evil of no man.” (or, as some versions, ‘not to slander any man.’)

o        Ephesians 4:29 “Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth…”

o        James 4:11,”Speak not evil” (or do not slander) “one of another…”

o        Proverbs 10:18, “…he that uttereth a slander, is a fool.”

o        Psalm 101:5, “whoso privily slandereth his neighbor, him will I cast off...”

Proverbs 11:9 which we read first of all, states that slander is not only a form of theft but also of murder. “An hypocrite with his mouth destroyeth his neighbor.” Thus, in all of scripture, slander, false witness, is very seriously regarded. It is seen as a theft. It is seen as murder. It is seen as an offense against God.

We can understand better what the commandment means when it forbids us to bear false witness against our neighbor if we understand what the word neighbor means in Hebrew. The word neighbor in Hebrew is the noun which also appears as a verb without any change in the word. And when it is a verb it means to feed or to nourish. Thus, a neighbor is one who feeds and nourishes us as well as one whom we feed and nourish. This is the literal meaning in Hebrew of the word neighbor. Now this points to the fact of mutual interdependence; inescapably so. Thus, to bear false witness against our neighbor, to slander him is inevitably to rob him and to kill him instead of feeding and nourishing him. And if he bears false witness against us, he is robbing us and murdering us instead of feeding and nourishing us.

When we are good neighbors, we nourish one another. We live together in mutual dependence upon one another. And we establish and further together a law order which feeds our common life and strengthens it. When we bear true witness, we feed one another with the truth (with the truth, not with flattery). This commandment does not tell us that we are to go around and indulge in sweet talk to everyone.

I recall someone saying some few years ago that a Christian was someone who never said anything to hurt anyone’s feelings. That’s not a definition of a Christian. A Christian very often finds it necessary to hurt someone’s feelings if they’re in the wrong. The truth very often hurts people’s feelings. We truly nourish one another, not when we feed one another lies, poison, but the truth. True witness is thus neither flattery nor concealing evil. It is working together in the Lord to establish godly order. Slander destroys that mutual feeding. It breaks the bonds of community life and it is a murder and theft against both the individual and the community.

Now this word neighbor gives us an insight into the nature of biblical welfare. Notice the word ‘neighbor’. One who feeds, one who nourishes; it works both ways. Everyone is one who is to be fed and to feed. Thus, in terms of biblical welfare, it’s not a one-way street in which the poor receive and the rich give. To be neighbors one of another there has to be a mutual relationship. It isn’t only the poor who are to be on the receiving end and the rich on the giving end. Where people are good neighbors, they make a mutual contribution to a common life. The modern idea therefore of the welfare recipient, who only receives and has nothing to give to society except a hungry mouth and a demand, has nothing to do with the biblical idea of a neighbor. He has a contribution in terms of scripture to make to society. If his contribution is no more than to abide by God’s law order and to work to further it, to make himself however poor he be, a useful member of society, he is then a good neighbor. To be a neighbor therefore, means that everyone works to establish godly order by their common effort. Everyone makes his contribution to it, no matter how poor. It also means that we minister to one another’s needs in terms of that law.

Now it is significant that this law, ye shall not steal, neither defraud, or deal falsely, neither lie to one another, follows Leviticus 19:9, 10 –it is the very next sentence. In verses 9, 10 deal with gleaning. So that the law of gleaning, which says that the poor are to be taken care of by gleaning, which involved hard work, gives us something of the nature of being neighbors. It is alien to the modern welfare concept.

But such a society in which men are neighbors one to another and they do not rob, nor defraud, nor slander one another, is impossible in a society without faith. Pascal once said, “Man is nothing but insincerity, falsehood and hypocrisy, both in regard to himself and in regard to others. He does not wish that he should be told the truth. He shuns saying it to others and all these moods so inconsistent with justice and reason, have their roots in his heart.”

Now Pascal there, very ably described what man is apart from God. He is hypocrisy, insincerity and falsehood. He hates the truth. And everything in his moods and in his nature is inconsistent and opposed to justice. Without faith, men reflect their fallen nature and they cannot be good neighbors. They live a lie and they prefer a lie.

This is why before you can have any kind of true law order you must have true theological order. Men must be in right relationship to God before they can be in the right moral and legal relationship one to another. Truth is in order to goodness, and truth is the foundation and mainspring of moral character, and unless men are in tune with God, who is the Way, the Truth and the Life, there can be no truth in their lives.

Centuries ago, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, one of the great medieval saints, commented on the matter of unity. The world around him was busy trying to establish unity. Kings and emperors and the Vatican were all busy fashioning some kind of unity to bring Europe together. And St. Bernard remarked that there were two kinds of unity. One is collective. And he said this is the kind of unity you get if you go around and gather a lot of rocks and pile them one on top of the other. You have a collective unity. They are together. But they don’t mean anything. The other kind of unity, he said, is constitutive. When things by their nature belong to one another, and he said, it is this constitutive unity that St. Paul spoke about when he described Christians and the body of Christ, the true, the invisible Church when he said we are members one of another just as the hand belongs to the body and the fingers to the hand and so on.

Today the world, because it is without God, is therefore without law. And it tries desperately as every evil age does to establish a collective unity. It is naturally collectivistic. It has no other answer but a collective unity—let’s bring them all together and pile them all on top of each other, to use St. Bernard’s illustration, like a pile of rocks. The more they bring them together, because there is no constitutive unity among them, the more radically they are separated. The more radically they are alien to one another and the more it becomes hellish in their collective unity; because they are by nature living and loving a lie and therefore cannot be neighbors.

We are told today on many a bumper strip that good neighbors come in all colors. What nonsense is that? Good neighbors come only in terms of Jesus Christ, in terms of a constituted unity, and it can be hell in a neighborhood of all blacks or all whites apart from that. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor, but no man can be a neighbor to anyone without the Lord.

Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God, we thank Thee for Thy sovereign Word. Thy Word is truth. Give us grace to conform our lives to Thy Word that we may prosper and make us strong in Thee unto the tearing down of the powers that are and to the destroying of the collective unity round about us, so that we may establish in Thee, a constitutive unity in which men are truly neighbors one to another. Prosper us to this purpose in Jesus’ name, amen.

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

Yes.

[Audience] When they, the government tells us all that we’re {?}, how are we supposed to {?} of responsibility when there’s no one to {?}

[Rushdoony] There is, but there—uh, no… you see, what we have to realize is this. A thistle, our Lord said, will not bear figs. And when a government becomes non-Christian, you cannot expect it to bear good fruit. So to get upset because a thistle isn’t producing figs is really ridiculous, isn’t it? And to get upset because Washington is lying to us today is also ridiculous. We should expect it. And we should say that until it becomes a good tree, until it becomes Christian it isn’t going to be any different. So I’m not going to get excited because a thistle doesn’t have some figs for me.

Yes.

[Audience] It would seem to me, it was {?} …and {?} results {?} … if you’d comment on that.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Our history books have been rewritten. And again, writing of history is an act of faith. You look at history in terms of meaning. Now meaning is a religious question, is it not? So if you believe that the great impediment to Man is God and Christ, the Bible, Christianity, what you will then do is to go back and try to see all history in terms of the progressive liberation of man from this. And so all the rest doesn’t mean anything to you, and you’re going to consider it worthless, and you’ll go through and you’ll try to re-write history in terms of the liberation of Man from God.

Well, of course you’re going to do violence to history because your position is false. And the only way you can do justice to history is to say that indeed God made all things. Alright, now what is God’s meaning in all this? And then you go through and you read history as God has ordained it. So you see, again it’s a religious question. And the writing of history today reflects the religious position of these men.

Now it is interesting that, first of all, they see history as liberation; liberation from God. But liberation into what? Well, if liberation, freedom, means freedom from God, it also ultimately freedom from meaning. Because without God, there is no meaning in the world, it’s just something that happened. And it is an illusion to say that the meaning I hold in my mind actually applies in the world out there. Thus, a professor of history in one of the major institutions in Southern California at the beginning of the last school year told his class there is no such thing as history. The idea that there is a meaning, a purpose, a direction in the life of man is a myth. However, although there is no such thing as history, I am being paid to teach it to you so let us begin. Now, what are the students going to learn in a course like that, you see?

And this is, however, the logical conclusion of their position. First they pervert the facts, and then they deny them! So what’s the use of having any kind of school, finally? Well, half the schools, the universities and colleges are not in session now; they’ve been closed because of violence, and they might as well stay closed permanently. Because if there is no meaning to anything, why waste your time learning anything?

Yes.

[Audience] One {?} might lead to {?} … progressives {?}

[Rushdoony] It’s a series of records, but if the records don’t mean anything, why bother with them, you see. I referred several weeks ago, about three weeks ago, to a new book by Gunther Stent, the molecular biologist, The Coming of the Golden Age, Reflections on the End of Progress. Dr. Stent, in that book which I read this week flying to Iowa, and the book is even more telling that the review indicated, says we’ve come to the end of science and the end of science and the end of art and the end of everything. Why? There is no meaning. And if there is no meaning, what’s the point of doing anything?

So he said, the present scientists who are still motivated by the past and have some drive to do something are basically stamp collectors. That is, they’re doing it because it’s interesting. But the younger generation coming up is not even interested in being stamp collectors, doing it just because it interests them, appeals to them. So, he said, there will be no scientists, no artists, nothing. And in his closing chapter he says we are all going to be Polynesians, interested only in pleasure and gradually, mankind will disappear. And of course he sees no hope because he has no faith.

So you see, what use are the records if nobody figures they mean anything and are worth bothering to study?

Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] I can’t hear y—

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, ah, what he saw basically was, that when—although he was not a Christian, was that when men are without faith, they have no perspective in terms of which to view anything. Therefore, they are moved by their own passions or are swayed as people with strong passions seek to sway them by molding their minds. So there is no principle then and you have the Fabian socialist cynicism into which he drifted.

Well, if there are no other questions, I’d like to pass on to you something a little more pleasant. As you know, about 3, 4, 5 days ago, during the past week, three masked robbers forced their way into the Brentwood Heights home of comedian Joe E. Brown and made off with $100,000 in jewelry, furs, cash and stock. They were two nurses, male nurses whom they overpowered, as well as Mrs. Brown. Joe E. Brown is very seriously ill and has to have round-the-clock care. Now, that’s a tragic thing when you have any kind of robbery, but I think it was really marvelous and Mrs. Brown is a woman after my own heart, the kind of wife that is really ideal, because when the bandits entered the house, she screamed at them, “If you bother Joe, I’ll kill you!”

[Laughter]

She’s 77 years old. Now there’s a real woman.

Now, there was a question asked some time ago when we studied the laws of diet about swordfish, whether that was permissible under the biblical laws of diet. And at the time, I did not know the answer, and I called up 2, 3 synagogues to get the answer, but most of the synagogues pay no attention to the kosher laws now anyway, so I did not get the answer from them, but I finally located it in a book on the Jewish Dietary Laws. And it did require a meeting of the Rabbinical Assembly of America’s Committee on Law and Standards to settle the question, because there was a question of scientific classification, and they decided that both sturgeon and swordfish are kosher. So they do come, technically, within the list of required, or permissible meats, or foods.

In the course of reading this book on the dietary laws, I was interested in the preface, because it rather prophetically tells the story of the plight of the synagogues today. The new rabbi was called to a congregation and the president of the congregation took him aside and told him that there were certain subjects they didn’t want to hear from the pulpit:

         Nothing about Hebrew Schools, because the children had to take music and dancing lessons and needed the afternoons for play.

         Nothing about the Sabbath because in America one was compelled to work on the Sabbath to make a living, and making a living came first.

         The dietary laws (kosher). Nothing about them, because it was only an ancient health measure out of place in modern times and furthermore too much trouble for the women to bother with two sets of dishes and so on.

The rabbi, surprised at the counsel he was receiving, asked anxiously, if I cannot talk about Hebrew Schools and if I cannot talk about the Sabbath and if I cannot talk about kosher laws, what can I talk about? The president replied in mild astonishment, ‘why that’s no problem at all, Rabbi. Just talk about Judaism!’

[Laughter]

Now it isn’t much different in the churches today when you’re not supposed to talk about the sovereignty of God or of predestination or of the infallibility of scripture or about the Ten Commandments, what’s there to talk about? That’s why there isn’t much that you hear talked about from the pulpit that’s of any significance nowadays.

Well,

Yes.

[Audience] Why was the… {?}

[Rushdoony] What?

[Audience] Why was swordfish … {?}

[Rushdoony] Oh, because there was a question as to whether it had scales.

[Audience] Oh!

[Rushdoony] That was the problem there.

If there are no further questions, let’s—

Yes.

[Audience] This isn’t a … {?} … but I’m curious. The Ancient Roman Empire was such an evil {?} Why is it that we worry about its goal?

[Rushdoony] We don’t worry about its goal.

[Audience] What I mean is, so many people {?} the fall of the Roman Empire, {?} that it’s like that now in {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. Oh, no, what they’re doing is to draw the analogy and say that the conditions that marked the last days of Rome are also apparent today in our midst. They are drawing the analogy. And it’s not because they’re worried about Rome, it’s because they’re worried about America.

I think that while we’re on that subject of the fall of Rome, one of the most significant things to me is this: when the Christians moved out into the Roman Empire, the first thing they tackled apart from preaching the Word of God, summoning people to believe in Jesus Christ, the first problem in the Roman Empire they hit at—and they hit it hard—was abortion. They called attention to that fact and told the Romans they were guilty of murder; that here was a thing that was particularly revealing, particularly basic, which revealed the radical depravity of a culture. When something that was most precious and represented something so intensely basic to the instincts of man and woman, they denied, they destroyed.

And so the Christian preaching against abortion from the earliest years of the Church was one of the most notable aspects of the work of the Early Church. And today the fact that the Church has so totally surrendered here is indicative of the fact that the Church is dead.

The Protestant Churches by and large have for the most part, gone right down the line with accepting, in fact pushing for, abortion. United Presbyterian Church is about to adopt at its general assembly, which I think is meeting perhaps this week, or any time now, a resolution which calls for the total abolition of any restraint with regard to abortion, total permissiveness with regard to sex and so on.

In Roman Catholic Church, the bishops have come out with a statement against abortion, but it is significant that it has had very little publicity even in their own church and it is not being followed by Catholics. In other words, there is a radical moral collapse on the part of the average Catholic as well as of their clergy because the clergy is not proclaiming the bishops’ statement. In other words, the Church is dead. Because at the point at which it made its entrance into Western Civilization, fighting against abortion, calling attention to what an evil it was, and telling people by means of this is a particularly telling illustration you are indeed far gone in your sins. You are degenerate. Only God through Jesus Christ can change you. Only Jesus Christ can re-establish a civilization so far gone that at this point also now the collapse has come, to me is a most revealing fact. It does indicate that it’s the last days of the modern world.

Well, let’s bow our heads now for the benediction.

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