Truth at the Table
The Ninth Commandment in an Age of Rumours, Reposts and Artificial Intelligence
Exodus 20:16
“You shall not give false testimony against your neighbour.”
Truth has always mattered to the life of a community. Long before social media, smartphones, artificial intelligence or instant access to information, societies depended upon people being able to trust what others said about them. A reputation could be protected or destroyed by a few words. An innocent person could be vindicated by truthful witnesses or condemned by dishonest ones.
This concern lies at the heart of the Ninth Commandment: “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbour.”
Like the other commandments, these words were given to Israel at a particular moment in their story. God had liberated them from slavery in Egypt and was forming them into a covenant community on their way to the Promised Land. The commandments were therefore not simply a collection of individual moral rules. They were instructions for the kind of people Israel was called to become and the kind of society they were called to build.
For such a community to flourish, people needed to be able to trust one another. That meant respecting life, relationships and property, but it also meant being able to trust what a neighbour said about you.
When Someone Else’s Words Determine Your Future
The original setting of the Ninth Commandment was primarily judicial. In ancient Israel there were no security cameras, fingerprints or digital records to establish what had happened. When accusations were brought before the elders of a community, eyewitness testimony could therefore play a decisive role.
A person's innocence or guilt could depend upon what others claimed to have seen.
This made false testimony extraordinarily dangerous.
A lie was not merely an unkind thing said about another person. In serious cases, it could cost someone their possessions, their freedom, their place within the community or even their life.
This is why Israel's law developed safeguards around testimony. A serious accusation could not simply rest upon the claim of one person, and multiple witnesses were particularly important in cases where a person's life was at stake. False witnesses could themselves face the punishment that they had attempted to bring upon an innocent person.
Behind these laws lies a fundamental concern for justice: another person's life should not be destroyed by our words.
The story of Naboth's vineyard in 1 Kings 21 shows just how devastating the opposite can be. King Ahab wanted Naboth's vineyard, but Naboth refused to surrender his ancestral land. Jezebel then arranged for false witnesses to accuse Naboth of blasphemy. Their testimony resulted in his execution, allowing Ahab to take possession of the vineyard.
False testimony became a weapon through which an innocent person was destroyed.
That is precisely what the Ninth Commandment seeks to prevent.
Truth Is About More Than the Courtroom
Yet the biblical concern with truthful speech does not remain confined to a courtroom.
As the law develops, Scripture begins speaking more broadly about the stories people tell about one another. Exodus 23 warns against spreading false reports, while Leviticus 19 warns God's people against going about spreading slander.
The concern is the same, even though the setting has changed.
Words have consequences.
False stories can damage a person's reputation, destroy relationships and undermine trust within a community. They can turn people against one another and cause real suffering even when no formal accusation is ever brought before a judge.
The Ninth Commandment therefore leads us toward a much broader principle:
Tell the truth about people.
This also changes how we understand the word neighbour. Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan reminds us that our neighbour cannot simply be reduced to the people who live next door, belong to our church or move within our immediate social circle.
The same principle can even extend beyond individuals. We tell stories about cultures, races, schools, communities and countries. Those stories can be truthful and fair, or they can become sweeping claims that misrepresent whole groups of people.
The command not to bear false witness therefore asks us to consider not only whether we deliberately invent lies, but whether the things we communicate about others are actually true.
And that question has become remarkably urgent in our digital age.
False Witness in the Age of Social Media
For most of human history, information travelled relatively slowly. A rumour might spread through a village or town, but there were physical limits to how quickly and how far it could travel.
Those limits have largely disappeared.
A claim made in Bloemfontein can be seen on the other side of the world within minutes. A WhatsApp message can move through dozens of groups. A Facebook post can reach thousands of people. A TikTok video can reach millions.
Social media has, in many ways, become a vast court of public opinion.
This dramatically increases both the reach and potential consequences of false testimony.
Importantly, we do not need to be the person who originally created the lie in order to participate in it.
Sometimes we receive something with the words:
“Apparently…”
“I don't know if this is true, but…”
“Someone told me…”
“Just sharing in case…”
And then we press Forward.
The lie did not begin with us, but it continued through us.
The Ninth Commandment challenges this behaviour too. If we do not know whether something is true, we should be extremely careful about becoming the person who carries that story to somebody else.
When Seeing Is No Longer Believing
The problem becomes even more complicated because false testimony is no longer limited to words.
A lie can be a photograph.
It can be a voice note.
It can be an edited news clip.
It can be a manipulated screenshot.
And increasingly, it can be an AI-generated photograph, recording or video that depicts something which never happened at all.
This presents a serious challenge in a society already carrying political, racial and social tensions.
A fabricated video appearing to show members of one racial group attacking another can reinforce existing prejudices within seconds. People become angry. The content spreads. Communities become suspicious of one another.
Even if the video is eventually exposed as fake, the mistrust it created may remain.
False testimony has always had the power to harm relationships. Technology has simply given it a much larger audience.
This makes discernment part of Christian responsibility.
A True Video Can Still Tell a Lie
Not every form of misinformation needs sophisticated technology.
Sometimes everything in the video is real.
The protest really happened. The people really were there. The violence genuinely occurred.
The deception lies in the context.
An old video can suddenly appear on WhatsApp accompanied by a message claiming that it happened yesterday. People react as though a new crisis is unfolding. Anger rises. Old tensions are reopened. The footage may be genuine, but the story being told through it is false. This is an important reminder that truth is about more than asking whether a photograph has been edited.
We also need to ask whether something has been represented truthfully.
When did this happen?
Where did it happen?
What happened before and after the clip?
Where did the information originate?
Does the headline accurately reflect the story?
Has important context been removed?
These questions are increasingly necessary if we want to take the Ninth Commandment seriously.
Christians Should Be Difficult People to Fool, and Difficult People to Use
Obedience to the Ninth Commandment in our time therefore requires a degree of media literacy.
Before sharing something, we should check where it came from. We should ask whether the page or account is legitimate, whether trustworthy sources confirm the claim and whether the content is being presented in its proper context.
This becomes particularly important when the content is inflammatory.
Information designed to make us immediately furious, frightened or suspicious should make us more cautious, not less.
The point is simply: don't just hit send.
Pause.
Check.
Think twice.
Then decide.
This responsibility does not disappear because someone else sent the message first. Neither does it disappear because we add a disclaimer such as, “Not sure if this is true.”
If we are unsure, perhaps that is precisely the reason not to share it.
As Christians, we should not become useful tools for people who profit from division, outrage and misinformation.
The Positive Side of the Ninth Commandment
Like the other commandments, the Ninth Commandment does more than prohibit destructive behaviour. It points us toward a positive way of living.
The opposite of false testimony is not silence.
It is truthful testimony.
If the command says, “Do not give false testimony against your neighbour,” its positive invitation is:
Tell the truth about your neighbour.
Speak of people truthfully.
Protect rather than casually destroy their reputation.
Refuse to pass along stories simply because they are entertaining, shocking or confirm what you already believe about someone.
Recognise the person being discussed as a human being made in the image of God.
This transforms truthfulness from a technical question about whether we have lied into an expression of love for our neighbour.
Truth matters because people matter.
Their dignity matters.
Their reputation matters.
The relationships that hold our communities together matter.
And therefore the things we say about one another matter.
Truth at the Table
There is something particularly fitting about reflecting on the Ninth Commandment around the Communion table. At the table, we gather not as isolated individuals but as a community brought together by Christ. We remember the One who reconciles us to God and to one another.
There is an unavoidable tension if we receive the bread and cup as brothers and sisters in Christ while using our words to tear one another apart.
The table reminds us that the person beside us is not merely a topic of conversation, a political category, a cultural stereotype or a profile picture on social media.
They are our neighbour.
They are someone made in the image of God.
And our speech should reflect that.
The same Christ who brings us together at His table calls us to carry truth into the conversations that happen around all our other tables, around dinner tables, coffee tables, boardroom tables, residence tables and the digital spaces where so much of our conversation now takes place.
Becoming True Witnesses
The world of Exodus 20 and our world of artificial intelligence and social media may appear extraordinarily different.
Yet the human problem beneath them remains remarkably similar.
Words have power.
Stories shape the way we see people.
False testimony destroys trust.
And communities cannot flourish when nobody knows whom they can believe.
The Ninth Commandment therefore remains deeply relevant:
“You shall not give false testimony against your neighbour.”
Before we speak, post, forward or share, perhaps we should learn to pause long enough to ask:
Do I know that this is true?
Am I representing this person fairly?
Am I passing on information simply because it confirms something I already want to believe?
Could my words unjustly harm my neighbour?
And perhaps the most important question:
Does the way I communicate reflect the One I claim to follow?
Because Christians are followers of the One who said:
“I am the way and the truth and the life.”
In a world overflowing with information, rumours, manipulation and increasingly convincing falsehoods, may the Church become known as a community whose words can be trusted.
May we speak truth about our neighbours.
May we guard one another's dignity.
May we refuse to become conduits for falsehood.
And wherever we go, around the table, in our communities and online, may we be true witnesses.
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