Exodus 20:16 — the commandment about what you say of another person
16You shall not speak false testimony against your neighbor.
The ninth commandment, and the wording is legal: it concerns what is declared against someone, not untruth in general. Narrower than the popular reading, and heavier in its effect.
Short answer
Exodus 20:16 is the ninth commandment of the Decalogue, and its language is legal: testimony is what you declare about someone in front of others. The target is not untruth in general but the false word that lands on a neighbour — a narrower prohibition than the popular reading, and a heavier one in effect.
- Written by
- Maria Luisa Navarro Schmitt
- Reviewed by
- Raphael Navarro Schmitt
- Published on
- Reading time
- 2 min read
The verse belongs to the ten commandments given at Sinai, shortly after the exodus from Egypt. Its position matters: it sits in the block about relations between people, between theft and coveting.
The vocabulary belongs to the court at the city gate, where cases were tried in front of witnesses. In a society without written records, the word of two people decided inheritance, property, and sometimes a life.
The central word is testimony, and it assumes a third party on trial. False evidence there was not merely an untruth: it was a weapon aimed at a specific person, with consequences nobody undid afterwards.
That is why the commandment is not exhausted by telling the truth. It asks something else: what your speech produces in the life of the person named. The broader reading, covering every lie, is a legitimate extension within the tradition — but the text starts narrower and sharper than that.
Today the court is the group chat, the comment thread, the conversation in the corridor. A screenshot without context, a crooked summary of somebody else’s story, a rumour repeated quietly — all of it does exactly what the commandment forbids: it builds a false portrait of a person who is not there to answer.
Where this verse appears
The verse belongs to the ten commandments given at Sinai, shortly after the exodus from Egypt. Its position matters: it sits in the block about relations between people, between theft and coveting.
The vocabulary belongs to the court at the city gate, where cases were tried in front of witnesses. In a society without written records, the word of two people decided inheritance, property, and sometimes a life.
What it says
The central word is testimony, and it assumes a third party on trial. False evidence there was not merely an untruth: it was a weapon aimed at a specific person, with consequences nobody undid afterwards.
That is why the commandment is not exhausted by telling the truth. It asks something else: what your speech produces in the life of the person named. The broader reading, covering every lie, is a legitimate extension within the tradition — but the text starts narrower and sharper than that.
What to do with it today
Today the court is the group chat, the comment thread, the conversation in the corridor. A screenshot without context, a crooked summary of somebody else’s story, a rumour repeated quietly — all of it does exactly what the commandment forbids: it builds a false portrait of a person who is not there to answer.
A prayer to carry with you
Lord, guard my mouth from what I did not see and cannot confirm. Let me rather stay quiet than help build the wrong picture of someone. Amen.