Deuteronomy 19:15-21--Laws Concerning Witnesses

Deuteronomy 19:15-21
English Standard Version
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Laws Concerning Witnesses
15 “A single witness shall not suffice against a person for any crime or for any wrong in connection with any offense that he has committed. Only on the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses shall a charge be established. 16 If a malicious witness arises to accuse a person of wrongdoing, 17 then both parties to the dispute shall appear before the LORD, before the priests and the judges who are in office in those days. 18 The judges shall inquire diligently, and if the witness is a false witness and has accused his brother falsely, 19 then you shall do to him as he had meant to do to his brother. So you shall purge the evil from your midst. 20 And the rest shall hear and fear, and shall never again commit any such evil among you. 21 Your eye shall not pity. It shall be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.

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We're still on the broader topic of justice and conducting trials that are instructions for the Levites and the judges that are chosen from among each of the tribes.  We are now told that there must be multiple witnesses that agree for any man to be convicted.

If there arises a witness that might maliciously be accusing someone in a false manner. then they are to come before the LORD by coming before the priests and the judges that were chosen by the people and were in office in that day.

The defendant will be examined and the witness will be carefully cross-examined.  If it is found that the witness was giving false testimony, then whatever the false witness was trying to have done to the accused would be done to the witness instead.  If they were wrongly accused of a death-penalty crime, that person would die because they had attempted to commit murder.  False testimony is something that God says He hates (lying lips) and that we should speak so that we need to add no oath or vow to what we say to make people believe us because our word should be enough.  We are to be people of integrity.

God says the reason for this kind of punishment is twofold.  First, it will purge the evil people from among them because eventually those wicked enough to try to use the courts to murder someone or other such capital offenses would be purged from among the people.  Second, for those that would see this happen it would send a message of "don't even think about it."  People getting away with crimes like this, especially using the courts to pervert justice and take advantage of the innocent, brings about further perversions of justice as the people would no longer see the courts as an instrument of God's Law and justice, but something to be manipulated for their own means.

Look at our justice system today.  Is everything required to be established by two or three witnesses that agree on each matter of the case that's going to trial? Is there punishment for giving false testimony (other than perjury charges)?  Do we do enough to make sure that the judges represent both God and the people and do we bring difficult cases before the LORD as we should? As we live in a culture that is crying out for "justice" and that justice is a perversion of what God means in much the way that we see here where they want people to be held guilty without trial by the accusation of just one party--a party that has malicious intent many times and that doesn't want to be cross-examined in court--we need to be extra-careful to uphold God's Law and justice (and also His grace and mercy in how we deal with personal offenses, especially with other "brothers" and "sisters" who we are not to drag into court or be litigious against).  How much would it say for us personally and as a society if people knew that the LORD's truth and justice were in charge in our courts, but that there was no place for the wicked in our land.  Those who planned to pervert justice and hope to get away with it need not enter the land or should quickly leave the land if they were one of our citizens and were acting in a way not in keeping with that identity of one who calls himself or herself by the name of the LORD (assuming we were a nation of people that belonged to the LORD and followed after Him and were a people called by His name).  What a testimony that would be!