Deuteronomy 19:16

19:15-21 Sentence should never be passed upon the testimony of one witness alone. A false witness should suffer the same punishment which he sought to have inflicted upon the person he accused. Nor could any law be more just. Let all Christians not only be cautious in bearing witness in public, but be careful not to join in private slanders; and let all whose consciences accuse them of crime, without delay flee for refuge to the hope set before them in Jesus Christ.

Verse 16. - To testify against him that which is wrong ; literally, to testify against him defection , i . e . from the Law of God. The speaker has apparently in view here all such defections from the Law as would entail punishment on the convicted offender. In Deuteronomy 13:5 [6], indeed, the crime described here as "that which is wrong" (margin, "falling away") is specially the crime of apostasy to idolatry; but the word ( סָרָה ), though usually expressing apostasy from Jehovah, has properly the general sense of a deflection from a prescribed course (from סוּר , to go off, to go aside), and so may describe any departure from what is constituted right. Deuteronomy 19:16

16 . But if ] So Sam. LXX. unrighteous witness ] Heb. witness of violence . So E, Exodus 23:1 , and Psalm 35:11 , apparently one who forces his evidence, does violence to the truth or intends violence to his neighbour. Driver renders malicious , ‘meditates some covert violence himself or assists by false testimony the high-handed wrong doer.’ Marti ‘with whom might goes before right.’ In any case the description is proleptic, his character is not decided till he is taken before the judges. rise up ] See on previous v . In this simpler sense in other Sg. passages; see on Deuteronomy 13:1 . to testify against him ] Same vb as in Deuteronomy 5:20 (17). wrong doing ] Heb. sarah same as rebellion , Deuteronomy 13:5 (6) R.V. (cp. Deuteronomy 17:17 ), but while there it means apostacy from Jehovah here it is wider, any delinquency or defection from the law.

The Punishment of a False Witness. - To secure life and property against false accusations, Moses lays down the law in Deuteronomy 19:15 , that one witness only was not "to rise up against any one with reference to any crime or sin, with every sin that one commits" (i.e., to appear before a court of justice, or be accepted as sufficient), but everything was to be established upon the testimony of two or three witnesses. The rule laid down in Deuteronomy 17:6 and Numbers 35:30 for capital crimes, is raised hereby into a law of general application (see at Numbers 35:30 ). קוּם (in Deuteronomy 19:15 ), to stand, i.e., to acquire legal force. - But as it was not always possible to bring forward two or three witnesses, and the statement of one witness could not well be disregarded, in Deuteronomy 19:16-18 Moses refers accusations of this kind to the higher tribunal at the sanctuary for investigation and decision, and appoints the same punishment for a false witness, which would have fallen upon the person accused, if he had been convicted of the crime with which he was charged. סרה בּו לענות, "to testify against his departure," sc., from the law of God, not merely falling away into idolatry ( Deuteronomy 13:6 ), but any kind of crime, as we may gather from Deuteronomy 19:19 , which would be visited with capital punishment.

The admonition in Deuteronomy 16:19 corresponds to the instructions in Exodus 23:6 and Exodus 23:8. "Respect persons:" as in Deuteronomy 1:17. To this there is added, in Deuteronomy 16:20, an emphatic admonition to strive zealously to maintain justice. The repetition of the word justice is emphatic: justice, and nothing but justice, as in Genesis 14:10, etc. But in order to give the people and the judges appointed by them a brief practical admonition, as to the things they were more especially to observe in their administration of justice, Moses notices by way of example a few crimes that were deserving of punishment (Deuteronomy 16:21, Deuteronomy 16:22, and Deuteronomy 17:1), and then proceeds in Deuteronomy 17:2-7 to describe more fully the judicial proceedings in the case of idolaters.