על עשרת הדברות י״חOn the Decalogue 18
א׳
1[88] How now! I would say to the perjurer, will you dare to accost any of your acquaintance and say, “Come, sir, and testify for me that you have seen and heard and been in touch throughout with things which you did not see nor hear.” My own belief is that you would not, for it would be the act of a hopeless lunatic.
ב׳
2[89] If you are sober and to all appearance in your right mind, how could you have the face to say to your friend, “For the sake of our comradeship, work iniquity, transgress the law, join me in impiety”? Clearly if he hears such words, he will turn his back upon his supposed comradeship, and reproaching himself that there should ever have been the tie of friendship between him and such a person, rush away from him as from a savage and maddened beast.
ג׳
3[90] Can it be, then, that on a matter on which you would not dare to cite even a friend you do not blush to call God to witness, God the Father and Ruler of the world? Do you do so with the knowledge that He sees and hears all things or in ignorance of this? If in ignorance,
ד׳
4[91] you are an atheist, and atheism is the source of all iniquities, and in addition to your atheism you cut the ground from under the oath, since in swearing by God you attribute a care for human affairs to one who in your view has no regard for them. But if you are convinced of His providence as a certainty, there is no further height of impiety which remains for you to reach when you say to God, if not with your mouth and tongue, at any rate with your conscience, “Witness to a falsehood for me, share my evil-doing and my knavery. The one hope I have of maintaining my good name with men is that Thou shouldest disguise the truth. Be wicked for the sake of another, the superior for the sake of the inferior, the Divine, the best of all, for a man, and a bad man to boot.”