על עשרת הדברות כ״זOn the Decalogue 27
א׳
1[138] Having denounced theft, he next proceeds to forbid false witness, knowing that false witnesses are guilty under many important heads, all of them of a grave kind. In the first place, they corrupt truth, the august, the treasure as sacred as anything that we possess in life, which like the sun pours light upon facts and events and allows none of them to be kept in the shade.
ב׳
2[139] Secondly, apart from the falsehood, they veil the facts as it were in night and profound darkness, take part with the offenders and against those who are wronged, by affirming that they have sure knowledge and thorough apprehension of things which they have neither seen nor heard.
ג׳
3[140] And indeed they commit a third transgression even more heinous than the first two. For when there is a lack of proofs, either verbal or written, disputants have resort to witnesses whose words are taken by the jurymen as standards in determining the verdicts they are about to give, since they are obliged to fall back on these alone if there is no other means of testing the truth. The result is that those against whom the testimony is given suffer injustice when they might have won their case, and the judges who listen to the testimony record unjust and lawless instead of just and lawful votes.
ד׳
4[141] In fact, the knavery of the action amounts to impiety, for it is the rule that jurymen must be put on their oaths and indeed oaths of the most terrific character which are broken not so much by the victims as by the perpetrators of the deception, since the former do not err intentionally, while the latter with full knowledge set the oaths at nought. They deliberately sin themselves and persuade those who have control of the voting to share their sin and, though they know not what they do, punish persons who deserve no chastisement. It was for these reasons, I believe, that He forbade false witness.