“You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.
Not to bear false witness
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
לֹא־תַעֲנֶה בְרֵעֲךָ עֵד שָׁקֶר
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהיר מהעיד עדות שקר. והוא אמרו לא תענה ברעך עד שקר, ונכפל זה במקום אחר ובלשון אחר והוא עד שוא, והעובר על לאו זה כבר גזרה עליו התורה ואמרה ועשיתם לו כאשר זמם. ולשון מכילתא לא תענה ברעך אזהרה לעדים זוממין, ובזה הלאו גם כן מלקות כמו שהתבאר בריש מכות (דף ב':). (יתרו, הלכות עדות פי"ז):
He prohibited giving false testimony. And that is His saying, "You shall not testify against your neighbor false testimony" (Exodus 20:13). And this has been repeated with a different language; and that is His saying, "vain testimony" (Deuteronomy 5:17). And the Torah has already decreed about this negative commandment, "You shall do to him as he schemed" (Deuteronomy 19:19). And the language of the Mekhilta (Mekhilta d'Rabbi Yishmael 20:13:3) is "'You shall not testify against your neighbor' - that is the prohibition for scheming witnesses." And there is also lashes for [violation of] this negative commandment, as is explained at the beginning of Makkot (Makkot 2b). (See Parashat Yitro; Mishneh Torah, Testimony 17.)
Hebrew: Sefer HaMitzvot, Warsaw 1883 (public domain). English: Sefaria Edition, trans. Rabbi Francis Nataf, 2021 (CC0). Via Sefaria; translator’s footnotes omitted.
Literary form: a flat, unconditional command
Applicability
How the catalog describes where and when this commandment applies. These are independent descriptions, not a verdict on which laws still count.
- Recorded as practiced today
Classical halakhic consequences
The consequences the classical halakhah attaches to this commandment, grouped by who imposes them. Where a category has none recorded, that absence is itself meaningful.
Imposed by a court
- Lashes (malkot)
At the hands of Heaven
No divinely-imposed consequence is recorded.
Ritual remedy
No ritual remedy is recorded.
How the streams of Judaism treat this commandment
The streams of Judaism read the same commandment differently — an ongoing plurality, not a ranking. Each position below is reported as the catalog records it; none is presented as the correct one.
- Orthodox Binding
- Conservative Binding
- Reform Binding
- Reconstructionist Binding
- Karaite Binding
24 of 613 commandments have been examined in depth so far — this one is queued.
How later traditions received this commandment
How later traditions read or reworked this commandment, each attributed to its own voice. The catalog’s own classification of each reception is shown as it records it, never adopted as GEBible’s.
Qumran (the Dead Sea Scrolls)
- CD 9:8-12 read it more strictly Concerns oath/testimony and the reproof procedure governing valid witness against a fellow member
Rabbinic aggadah
- Pesiqta Rabbati 21 expanded it homiletically
- Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Bahodesh 8 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Decalogo 138-141 rationalized it
- De Specialibus Legibus 4.31-54 expanded it homiletically
Josephus
- Ant. 4.219 affirmed it
The New Testament
- Matthew 19:18 affirmed it Jesus lists ou pseudomartyrēseis among the commandments
- Mark 10:19 affirmed it
- Romans 13:9 affirmed it subsumed under love of neighbor
- Matthew 26:59-60 The catalog describes this reception as: narrative allusion false witnesses sought against Jesus, narrative dramatization
The Church Fathers
- Augustine, Quaestiones in Heptateuchum 2.71 reinterpreted it
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 25:72 carried a parallel
- Sahih al-Bukhari 2654 (false witness among major sins) carried a parallel
Beside the older legal codes of its world
The commandment set beside the ancient Near-Eastern legal collections scholars compare it to — a descriptive comparison, not a claim of dependence.
- code of hammurabi penalty for false accusation/false testimony, including talionic liability Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§1-4 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (1997)
- middle assyrian laws penalty for slander/defamation against a married woman's sexual conduct; thematically related to false accusation but distinct from judicial false testimony/perjury Relationship to the parallel: shared theme A §§18-19 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (1997)
- egyptian negative confession self-exculpatory denial of falsehood/false witness Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence declarations against lying and false speech Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead (1972)
Where this commandment meets modern human-rights frameworks
One modern normative lens, attributed to it — not GEBible’s assessment. Each row names the framework it measures against and the catalog’s own classification of the relation.
This framework catalogues tensions; it records agreement in only one of its entries. The near-total tension rate is the shape of the instrument, not a finding.
-
Article 5
This framework classifies the relation as an incompatible method.
The prohibition against false testimony is fully consonant with modern evidentiary and ethical norms, but its prescribed sanction of thirty-nine lashes (malkot) constitutes judicially imposed corporal punishment, which UDHR Article 5 classifies as cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.
-
general principle
This framework classifies the relation as an incompatible method.
Modern proportionality doctrine prohibits corporal punishment categorically as a penal instrument; while the content of the prohibition — against perjury — is universally shared, the lash sanction represents a method of enforcement incompatible with post-Enlightenment penal norms.
-
general principle
This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.
Rabbinic tradition holds that the power to impose Torah-prescribed lashes lapsed with the dissolution of the ordained Sanhedrin; the malkot sanction for false testimony is de jure operative in Orthodox enumeration but has been effectively suspended for approximately two millennia.