Deuteronomy 19:15-21. FALSE TESTIMONY.

The law of retaliation is sternly laid down here; but it must be administered by the judges, not by men acting on their own behalf.

(17) Both the men . . . shall stand before the Lord, before the priests and the judges.--This appears to mean that all cases of suspected false testimony were to go before the supreme court (see Deuteronomy 17:9); that the matter was not to be lightly decided.

(21) Eye for eye, tooth for tooth.--This is to be effected by the award of the judges, not as a matter of private revenge. But manifestly it rests with the injured party to press the case.

Verses 15-21. - To secure against injury to life or property through inadequate or false attestation, it is enacted that more than one witness must appear before anything can be established; and that, should a witness be found on trial to have testified falsely against his neighbor, he was to be punished by having done to him what he thought to have done to his neighbor (cf. Deuteronomy 17:6; Numbers 35:30). Verse 15. - The rule in Deuteronomy 17:6, regarding accusations of idolatry, is here extended to accusations of every kind before a court of justice; a single witness was not to be admitted as sufficient to convict a man of any offence, either civil or criminal.

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.One witness shall not rise up against a man for any iniquity, or for any sin, in any sin that he sinneth,.... Whether capital sins, or pecuniary debts; or whatsoever sins a man may be guilty of whether sins against the first or second table of the law, whether greater or lesser sins, whether in moral or civil things; the Jews except only in the case of a woman suspected of adultery and of beheading the heifer:

at the mouth of two witnesses, or at the mouth of three witnesses, shall the matter be established; either for acquittance or condemnation; and the witnesses may not, as Jarchi says, write their testimony in a letter, and send it to the sanhedrim, nor may an interpreter stand between the witnesses and the judges; See Gill on Deuteronomy 17:6.