Proverbs 19:5

A false witness shall not be unpunished.

The woe of the untruthful

The man who gives wrong evidence. The man of untruthfulness in common conversation. Such men are always punished in one way or another. Nothing is more frequently inculcated in Holy Scripture than the practice of truth, justice, and righteousness. The commandments of God are called “truth,” because in keeping of them lie our truest advantages and everlasting comforts. All kinds of fraud and deception are abominable in the sight of God, and inconsistent with the ordering of any civil government. For--

1. Fraud in commerce and dealing is but a species of robbery.

2. Haughtiness of spirit unfits a man for those offices of meekness, courtesy, and humanity which make society agreeable and easy.

3. No less unsociable is a tongue addicted to calumny, talebearing, and detraction. It is impossible for men of these dispositions not to meet with their punishment in their own mischievous ways. The law of Moses requires the judge who discovers any man bearing false witness against another to inflict the same pains upon him as the accused should have suffered had the allegations proved true. Among the Athenians an action lay, not only against a false witness, but also against the party who produced him. The punishment of false witness among the Old Romans was to cast the criminal headlong from the top of the Tarpeian rock. Later false witnesses were branded with the letter K. By our own statute law the false witness is to be imprisoned for six months and fined twenty pounds. This is a short specimen of such human penalties as have been awarded to false witnesses, considered as pests of mankind and enemies of the laws and governments of the respective communities to which they belong. Yet if such receive no correction from the hand of man, they cannot hope to escape the wrath of God. (W. Reading, M. A.)