Bird's-eye view
These two verses are a potent one-two punch against the twin sins of malicious testimony and personal vengeance. They function as a vital pillar of social order, grounding it in truthfulness and a rejection of personal vendettas. The first verse addresses the legal and public sphere, forbidding the use of words as weapons to tear down a neighbor without just cause. This strikes at the heart of the Ninth Commandment. The second verse addresses the internal, personal sphere, forbidding the heart from harboring a retaliatory spirit. It is a direct prohibition of the lex talionis, the law of retaliation, when wielded by an individual. Taken together, these proverbs demand a righteousness that is both public and private, shaping a man who is trustworthy in court and gracious in conflict. They call us away from the devil's native tongue, which is the lie, and away from his native impulse, which is revenge, and toward the character of Christ, who is the Truth and who, when He was reviled, did not revile in return.
At the root of both prohibitions is a profound understanding of justice. True justice is God's prerogative and is to be administered through His ordained means, which are godly civil magistrates operating on the basis of clear evidence. To bear false witness is to corrupt this process, making a mockery of justice. To take vengeance into your own hands is to usurp this process, making yourself the judge, jury, and executioner. Both sins flow from a heart that has forgotten its place before God and its obligation to love the neighbor. These verses, therefore, are intensely practical instructions for building a society where trust can flourish and cycles of violence can be broken.
Outline
- 1. The Upright Man's Testimony (Prov 24:28-29)
- a. The Prohibition of Baseless Testimony (Prov 24:28a)
- b. The Prohibition of Deceitful Lips (Prov 24:28b)
- c. The Prohibition of Personal Vengeance (Prov 24:29a)
- d. The Rejection of Vigilante Justice (Prov 24:29b)
Context In Proverbs
This passage sits within a larger collection of "the words of the wise" (Proverbs 22:17-24:34). This section is characterized by longer, more developed thoughts than the simple couplets found in the central portions of the book. These two verses, 28 and 29, are part of a series of admonitions that touch on diligence, justice, and personal integrity. They follow warnings against laziness and folly and precede a concluding observation about the sluggard's field. The immediate context is one of practical wisdom for navigating community life. A society cannot hold together if its members lie about one another in legal settings or if every offense is met with escalating personal retaliation. These prohibitions are therefore essential for the peace and stability of the covenant community, which is a central concern of the book of Proverbs. They are the nuts and bolts of what it means to live wisely and righteously among your people, before the face of God.
Key Issues
- The Ninth Commandment in Practice
- The Nature of False Witness
- The Sin of Personal Vengeance
- Distinction Between Civil and Personal Retaliation
- The Foundation of Social Trust
- The Old Testament Roots of the Golden Rule
Justice Belongs to God
At the heart of these two proverbs is the fundamental principle that justice, and particularly vengeance, belongs to God alone. "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord" (Rom. 12:19, quoting Deut. 32:35). God executes this vengeance in two primary ways in this life. The first is through His ordained ministers, the civil magistrates, who bear the sword to punish evildoers (Rom. 13:4). The second is through His inscrutable providence, where He brings ruin upon the wicked in His own time and His own way. The Christian's role is not to take up the sword of personal vengeance.
The sin of false witness is an attempt to corrupt the first means. It is a lie offered up to the magistrate so that he will wield the sword unjustly. It is a perversion of God's appointed process. The sin of personal retaliation is an attempt to usurp the entire process. The vengeful man says, "God and the magistrate are too slow for me. I will be the minister of wrath." Both sins reveal a profound lack of faith in God. The false witness does not trust God to bring about his desired outcome through truthful means. The vengeful man does not trust God to settle the score at all. These proverbs call us to a radical trust in God's justice, which frees us to speak the truth and to love our enemies.
Verse by Verse Commentary
28 Do not be a witness against your neighbor without cause, Nor deceive with your lips.
This first verse is a direct application of the Ninth Commandment. The prohibition is twofold. First, we are not to be a witness against our neighbor without cause. This addresses the motivation and foundation of our testimony. In a formal, legal setting, this is a command against bringing accusations that have no substance. It forbids being a malicious prosecutor, a gossip who hauls a neighbor into court over a trifle, or a perjurer who invents a case out of whole cloth. There must be a legitimate cause, a real crime, a genuine injury. Outside the courtroom, this is a powerful word against all forms of baseless slander, gossip, and backbiting. We live in an age where reputations are destroyed online "without cause" every single day. Christians are to have nothing to do with this. Our words must be weighty, true, and necessary.
The second clause, Nor deceive with your lips, addresses the content of our testimony. Even if there is a "cause," a real event to be discussed, we are still forbidden from deception. This is where the crafty witness comes in. He doesn't invent the story, but he twists it. He omits exculpatory details. He exaggerates the offense. He uses clever rhetoric to paint a misleading picture. He tells the truth, but not the whole truth, and he does it in a way that is calculated to deceive. This is what the false witnesses did at the trial of Jesus. They testified to things He had actually said, but they wrenched them from their context to make Him appear a blasphemer. This proverb commands a rugged, straightforward truthfulness. Our lips must be free from the slime of deceit.
29 Do not say, “As he did to me so I shall do to him; I will render to the man according to his work."
This verse shifts from the courtroom to the heart, from public testimony to private resolve. It prohibits the spirit of personal revenge. The temptation is stated plainly: "He hit me, so I will hit him back. He cheated me, so I will cheat him." This is the natural, fallen, playground ethic that governs the world. It is the logic of feuds and vendettas and endless cycles of retaliation. The proverb forbids even saying this, which includes saying it to yourself in the secret counsel of your own heart. The desire for payback must be mortified at the root.
The second clause, I will render to the man according to his work, is particularly striking because this is language the Bible uses to describe what God does. God is the one who renders to every man according to his work (Ps. 62:12; Rom. 2:6). For a man to say this about his neighbor is therefore an act of astonishing arrogance. It is to climb up onto God's judgment seat and claim His divine prerogative as our own. We are not qualified for the position. We do not have the omniscience to know all the facts, the perfect righteousness to judge impartially, or the authority to execute the sentence. This proverb is a negative form of the Golden Rule. The New Testament tells us to do unto others as we would have them do unto us. This Old Testament wisdom tells us not to do to others what they have done to us, when what they have done is sinful. We are not to repay evil for evil, but are to overcome evil with good (Rom. 12:21).
Application
These verses cut right across the grain of our modern culture and our fallen hearts. We live in a world that runs on false witness and revenge. Social media is a roaring furnace of accusation without cause and deception with lips. Our political discourse is little more than two sides bearing false witness against each other. And our entertainment is saturated with revenge fantasies, where the hero is the man who "renders to the man according to his work" with a gun.
As Christians, we are called to be a city on a hill, a people whose speech is true and whose response to injury is grace. First, this means we must be scrupulously honest. We must hate lying and deception, not just the big, obvious lies, but the subtle deceptions, the misleading framing, the convenient omissions. We must be people whose "yes" is "yes," especially when speaking about our neighbors. This is foundational to any kind of Christian community or witness.
Second, we must ruthlessly crucify the desire for payback. When you are wronged, when you are slandered, when you are cheated, the natural man screams for blood. This proverb commands us to tell that natural man to be silent. We must consciously and prayerfully hand the matter over to God. This does not mean we cannot seek justice through biblical means, like the courts. But it means the desire of our heart must not be "I'll get him back," but rather "Vengeance is Yours, Lord." The ultimate power to do this comes from the gospel. We who have been forgiven an infinite debt have no business strangling our brother over a hundred denarii. Christ absorbed the ultimate injustice on the cross, praying "Father, forgive them." Because He did not render to us according to our work, we are freed from the satanic compulsion to render to others according to theirs.