D19-9: Today’s Social engineers And Criminal Justice System Can’t Hold A Candle To God’s Torah

“One witness alone will not be sufficient to convict a person of any offense or sin of any kind; the matter will be established only if there are two or three witnesses testifying against him.  If a malicious witness comes forward and gives false testimony against someone, then both the men involved in the controversy are to stand before Adonai, before the cohanim and the judges in office at the time.  The judges are to investigate carefully. If they find that the witness is lying and has given false testimony against his brother, you are to do to him what he intended to do to his brother. In this way, you will put an end to such wickedness among you.”-Deuteronomy 19:15-19

From Deuteronomy 19:15, we are introduced to the Lord’s fail-safe system designed to prevent a wrongful conviction based on very little or no evidence at all.

I’m referring to the condition that there must be the testimony of at least two witnesses to convict a person accused of a crime.

In fact, the more witnesses the better.

Two was just the required minimum.

However, the truth is, there were times when just one witness came forward and when that happened it would set off an investigation followed by a trial to determine if there was any truth to what this singular lone wolf witness was saying.

In the Bible, witnesses performed several functions.

A witness was usually the one who brought the charges in the first place.

Or a witness may have been called because he or she just happened to possess certain knowledge pertinent to the case being tried at the time.

Finally, in a capital case, the witness was to serve as the chief executioner whether he wanted to or not.

The next several verses after verse 15 are all about how to deal with a false witness who makes a false charge against someone OR…

…deliberately gives false testimony against the accused due to some ulterior motive.

Now here’s where the ingenuity of God’s justice system really comes into play.

If the court which was made up of priests and appointed laymen came to the conclusion that the witness in question did indeed lie and intentionally give out false testimony, he would have to bear the EXACT SAME PUNISHMENT the accused person would have had to bear if he had been convicted based on the false testimony.

This is absolute genius!!!

If we applied this particular Torah instruction to our current justice system, in one fell swoop, we’d do away with any malicious and false police reports and lying witnesses.

Heck, the Torah even goes so far as to demand the death penalty for a witness who intentionally accuses someone of a capital crime.

I LOOOOOOOOOVE THIS!

Let me make something clear here however.

Understand that this harshness only applied to deliberate or intentional lying.

It did not apply to mistaken identity or simple error.

I have to say I am completely amazed and blown away at how ingenious this is.

By making sure the false witness will suffer the exact same consequences he had schemed to do to his victim, the system ensures that others will be afraid to try the same thing and thus as a consequence, such evil will be purged from the community.