Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Deuteronomy · About this commentary
Landmarks and Witnesses
Deuteronomy 19:14-21
14 You shall not remove your neighbor’s landmark, which they of old time have set, in your inheritance which you shall inherit, in the land that Yahweh your God gives you to possess. · WEB
A false witness receives the penalty he tried to inflict, which prices perjury at exactly what it was aimed to cost.
The chapter turns to two ways of stealing without being seen.
The first is a boundary stone. You shall not remove your neighbor's landmark, which they of old time have set Deuteronomy 19:14.
It is theft that leaves no trace. A stone moved a few feet at night transfers land permanently, and the victim cannot prove anything because the evidence is the stone. The reference to they of old time matters: in a country divided by lot, those markers recorded God's allocation, so moving one is not merely fraud against a neighbor.
The second is testimony, and the law returns to the rule already given for capital cases and now extends it to everything. One witness shall not rise up against a man for any iniquity, or for any sin Deuteronomy 19:15.
Any charge, not only serious ones. A single accuser can never establish a matter, however credible he seems.
The procedure for a suspected perjury is careful. Both parties shall stand before Yahweh, before the priests and the judges, and the judges shall make diligent inquisition Deuteronomy 19:17–18. The case goes to the senior court, and the standard is investigation rather than impression.
Then the penalty, and it is the most elegant rule in the code. You shall do to him as he had thought to do to his brother Deuteronomy 19:19.
The liar receives exactly the outcome he was trying to produce. Accuse a man of a capital crime falsely, and the sentence you sought is yours. Accuse him of something smaller, and the penalty is smaller. Perjury is priced at whatever the perjurer was aiming for, which means the calculation is never worth making.
And the intended effect is deterrence rather than vengeance: those who remain shall hear, and fear Deuteronomy 19:20.
The chapter ends with the formula that has been misread for centuries: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth Deuteronomy 19:21.
Read in place, it is a limit rather than a licence. It appears at the end of a section on court procedure, addressed to judges, and its function is to cap the penalty at the injury. A society without it takes an eye for a tooth and a life for an eye. The Lord later forbids private individuals to use it at all Matthew 5:38–39, which is a different point: it was never a rule for personal retaliation, and he says so.
settled What this mark means