Proverbs 19:5 Commentary and Bible Study

This proverb is repeated almost word for word in verse 9. Since the subject here is relationships, the false witness must be understood as one who divides people and speaks lies in order to turn former friends against each other. Solomon focuses on the outcome of the false witness’s behaviour, and gives a strong warning against this evil. The false witness knows that he has spoken falsehood even though he may have attempted to justify this to himself. He cannot be entirely at peace with himself because although he may work hard to exaggerate the faults that provoked him to speak, these are only further lies which he tells to himself. Once a person has allowed one lie to be acceptable to him, then all other lies follow more easily. A false witness, once detected is regarded as a despicable person, especially when he witnesses to bring down another. He is quite happy to see the other party unfairly punished for something they have not done, just because he sees some advantage for himself. Perhaps the other had wronged him and he wanted revenge, but thought that he must engineer this himself. Perhaps there is some jealousy between them and he simply wants to cause hurt, or perhaps he saw the other as a rival who stood in the way of his ambitions and so sought to remove him, by fair means or foul. When nothing evil befell his adversary in a natural way, he decided to give providence a helping hand, and concocted some evil plan to remove him. The punishment on the false witness under the law of Moses was severe but just. Of course, the ninth command forbidding lying takes the false witness as a concrete example. The law commanded that if a witness was proved to be false, ‘Then shall ye do unto him, as he had thought to have done unto his brother: so shalt thou put the evil away from among you’ (Deuteronomy 19:19). Imperfect human justice does not discover every false witness, but God’s justice will do so, and therefore every false witness should reckon that he will be discovered and consider the shame attached to what he does which will be brought down on his head.The false witness may lie to deny what has happened, or to assert falsely what has not happened. It is very hard to fight against the false witness, for often he only makes his move when his false testimony will be difficult to refute. The one who finds they are witnessed against must commit their case to God and trust patiently to his providence to clear them. They can be sure that eventually God will bring all things to light, but, before that happens, there may be a period of testing when they must bear with unjustified disapproval or punishment.