The text describes the L ORD as very angry with Ahab, and the prophet Elijah pronounces judgment on both Ahab and Jezebel. After Naboth was subsequently stoned to death, Ahab seized possession of Naboth's vineyard. Ahab wanted the land to use as a vegetable garden, but Naboth refused to sell or trade the property to Ahab saying, 'The L ORD forbid that I should give up to you what I have inherited from my fathers!' Ahab's wife Jezebel then conspired to obtain the vineyard by writing letters in Ahab's name to the elders and nobles in Naboth's town instructing them to have two scoundrels bear false witness claiming that Naboth has cursed both God and the king. King Ahab of Israel tried to convince Naboth the Jezreelite to sell him the vineyard Naboth owned adjacent to the king's palace. The narrative in 1 Kings 21 describes a case of false testimony. ″A false witness will perish″ if he does not repent. ″A false witness will not go unpunished.″ king Solomon says. He is like a war club, or a sword, or a sharp arrow. The lying witness is a deceitful man, who mocks at justice. The witness who hid what he had seen or what he knew bore his iniquity if he realized his guilt, he had to confess his sin, brought to the Lord a female lamb or goat from the flock (or two turtledoves or two pigeons, or a tenth of an ephah of fine flour) for a sin offering as his compensation for the sin he committed. False testimony is among the things that defile a person, Jesus says. įalse witness is among the six things God hates, king Solomon says. Those eager to receive or listen to false testimony were also subject to punishment. For example, since murder was a capital crime, giving false testimony in a murder case was subject to the death penalty. In cases where false testimony was suspected, the religious judges were to make a thorough investigation, and if false testimony were proven, the false witness was to receive the punishment he had intended to bring on the person falsely accused. For a person who had a charge brought against them and were brought before a religious prosecution, the charge was considered as established only on the evidence of two or three sworn witnesses. The Hebrew Bible contains a number of prohibitions against false witness, lying, spreading false reports, etc. You shall not fall in with the many to do evil, nor shall you bear witness in a lawsuit, siding with the many, so as to pervert justice, nor shall you be partial to a poor man in his lawsuit. You shall not join hands with a wicked man to be a malicious witness. Offenses against the truth express by word or deed a refusal to commit oneself to moral uprightness: they are fundamental infidelities to God and, in this sense, they undermine the foundations of covenant with God. This moral prescription flows from the command for holy people to bear witness to their deity. The command against false testimony is seen as a natural consequence of the command to 'love your neighbour as yourself'. The Book of Exodus describes the Ten Commandments as being spoken by God, inscribed on two stone tablets by the finger of God, broken by Moses, and rewritten by Yahweh on a replacement set of stones hewn by Moses. ' Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor' ( Biblical Hebrew: לֹא תַעֲנֶה בְרֵעֲךָ עֵד שָׁקֶר, romanized: Lōʾ t̲aʿăneh b̲ərēʿăk̲ā ʿēd̲ šāqer) (Exodus 20:16) is one of the Ten Commandments, widely understood as moral imperatives by Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant scholars. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour, Lucas Cranach the elder

To bear false witness synonym