Do Not Bear False Witness

Shemot says ed shaker, a lying witness. Devarim says ed shav, an empty one, the same word the third commandment uses for taking Hashem's name "in vain" (Shemot 20:7). The Mechilta (an early midrash on Shemot) asks why this commandment is needed at all, since the Torah already gives the punishment for a false witness:

The Mechilta asks the same question about murder, adultery and kidnapping: a punishment written in one place, and a warning, an azharah, in the Ten Commandments. So what is the punishment for a lying witness?

A few verses later, the Torah describes witnesses whose testimony turns out to be false:

Witnesses caught this way are called eidim zomemim, "scheming witnesses." How are they caught? Not by a second pair of witnesses who simply tell the story differently. The Mishnah's case is a second pair who prove that the first could not have seen it at all:

Rav Adda, in the Gemara, finds this in the words "the witness is a false witness": the testimony must be shown false in its very "body" (Makkot 5a). Rashi explains: in the witnesses themselves. And when are they punished? The Mishnah sets the moment, against the Sadducees (a group in Second Temple times that rejected the Sages' tradition):

In the Sages' reading, "as he schemed to do" means the brother is still alive: the witnesses receive what they tried to do to him. Our own note: one of the stories below shows how seriously the Sages took getting this right.

The Gemara brings a list of cases learned from this verse, and every one of them is about a court case. One is a teacher who asks his student for a favor:

(A maneh was a large sum of money.) The Gemara objects: testifying to something you did not see is plain false witness, forbidden by the Ten Commandments themselves. So the case must be smaller:

Our own observation: even silence, when it is set up to make people believe something false, is too close. The same list says a judge may not let one side come dressed in fine clothes and the other in rags, and may not hear one side before the other arrives (Shevuot 31a).

The Gemara brings Rabbi Chanina's words to explain why Reish Lakish calls the letter tav "the end of the seal of the Holy One": the seal is אֱמֶת, emet, and tav is its last letter. Reish Lakish teaches, in the Yerushalmi (Sanhedrin 1:1) and the Midrash (Bereishit Rabbah 81:2), that emet starts with alef, the first letter of the alef-bet, has mem in the middle, and ends with tav, the last. Our own observation: when a person lies, he signs something with a seal that is not Hashem's.

Truth is also one of the three things the world stands on. Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel puts it right next to peace:

Usually truth and peace go together. What happens when they pull apart?

After Yaakov died, Yosef's brothers were afraid he would take revenge, so they sent him a message in their father's name: forgive your brothers (Bereishit 50:15-17). Rashi says Yaakov never gave that command; they changed the facts for the sake of peace (Rashi on Bereishit 50:16). Rabbi Natan goes further:

Hashem had sent the prophet Shmuel to anoint a new king while Shaul was still on the throne. Shmuel was afraid, and Hashem answered him:

Shmuel did invite the town's elders and Yishai's family to the offering (Shmuel I 16:5). Our own observation: he just did not say everything he had come to do. A third proof, from Sarah, is the first of the stories below. Then there is a list of three everyday cases, from Shmuel the Sage of the Gemara (not the prophet):

Rashi explains each one. Asked whether he knows a tractate well, a scholar may say no: that is humility. Asked about private matters of his married life, "a bed," he may say no: that is modesty. Asked whether a host treated him well, he may say no, so that people who are not fit guests do not crowd in on the host and use up his money.

In one view in the Mechilta (an early midrash on Shemot), Rabbi Chananya ben Gamliel (in some editions, Chanina) holds that the Ten Commandments were written five on each tablet, and he reads each pair across. The Sages there disagree: וַחֲכָמִים אוֹמְרִים: עֲשָׂרָה עַל לוּחַ זֶה וַעֲשָׂרָה עַל לוּחַ זֶה, "And the Sages say: ten on this tablet, and ten on that one" (Bachodesh 8:22). In his view Shabbat faces false witness:

Our own explanation: Shabbat is a statement. The fourth commandment gives its reason: in six days Hashem made the heavens and the earth, and He rested on the seventh (Shemot 20:11). So every week that a Jew rests, he says it again with his actions, like a witness. Breaking Shabbat, in the Mechilta's words, is as if one testifies that He created the world in six days and did not rest on the seventh: half of what the fourth commandment says, denied. So in Rabbi Chananya's pairing, both are about being a witness, one in a courtroom and one in the whole world.