LIE, LYING
In NT, in which the duty of truthfulness is strongly insisted on in contrast to Oriental deceit- fulness, it is suggested that there are three lies por excellence—heathen religion (Ro 155), the claim οἱ the false apostle (Rev 2*), and the denial ‘ that Jesus is the Christ’ (1 Jn 2”).
2. The heinousness of lying appears in various
rticulars—that it is utterly inconsistent with the
eee which is of the essence of the divine nuture, and gives a law to the people (Lv 19"), and more icularly with the commandments of a God who Himself is absolutely true (Ps 89%); and also that it has anti-social effects of a ruinous and far-reaching kind (Prophets, passim ; οἵ. Pr 26%). In NT its sinfulness is further emphasized by tracing it to the example and inspiration of Satan (Jn 8.5, Ac 5%), or to the old man which is put off in conversion (Col 3).
3. The penalties of lying are set forth in an ascending scale. Various saws in Pr point to the heritage of contempt which is the portion of the habitual liar. The judicial punishment of the false witness is the recoil upon himself of the evil ‘he had thought to do unto his brother’ (Dt 19°). In the history of Gehazi (2 K 5), and of Ananias and Sapphira (Ac δ), the aggravated lie is punislfed by a special judgment of appalling severity. In Ps 244 lying is 1x umbered with the sins which dis- qualify from the worship of, and so exclude from communion with, God. And as a consistent de- velopment of this stern judgment we find it in the ΝΤ as one of the list of sins by which the essence of character is tested, and at become habitual, entail the forfeiture of eternal salvation ‘Rey 2127 291),
Two problems arising out of the subject may be briefly referred to. The first is connected with the passages which seem to represent God as using deceitful means—esp. 1 Καὶ 22%, where He is said to have lured Ahab to destruction by ‘ putting a lying spirit in the month of the prophets,’ and in a lesser degree 1S 167, where He instructs Samuel to con- ceal his real purpose from Saul by offering a sacrifice. As regards the first of these cases it may, however, be fairly held, as is indeed required by the general tenor of OT religion, that the sense is satisfied by regarding God, not as the author of sin, but_as overruling wickedness to the working out of His righteous purposes. ‘All that is meant is that, in carrying out God’s decree of condemna- tion, he (the lying spirit) becomes a means of leading the king on to his doom through the fawn- ing guile of these false prophets’ (W. S. Bruce, Ethics of OT, P 269). It should be added that the difficulty of this class of passages is less keenly felt when the mechanical theory of inspiration is abandoned.*
A second problem concerns the attitude of the Bible in its moral teaching towards the casuistical controversy over the lie of exigency. In other words: when we have said of a statement that it is wittingly false, or intended to deceive, is it thereby condemned as having the character of guilt? or does it lose this character if it can be shown that the false statement was required in self-defence, or by the law of love? Of such lies we have examples in the lives of Abraham (Gn 20%) and of David (1S 21), although obviously it does not follow, any more than in the case of the graver failings of OT saints, that they are recorded for example and guidance. On the whole, the rigorous doctrine must
* Under the same category reference may be made to the e (Jn 78-20.14) where our Lord said, ‘i ,o not up to this east’; then ‘went he also up, not openly.’ But, with the reading of BL (οὐκ. . . οὕπω), or even without it, if the sentence is continued (ὁ ἑμὸς καιρὸς οὕπω rerAfperas), the difficulty almost disappears. What is quite certain is that the author of the Fourth Gospel cannot have thought that any unveracity was implied. See Meyer, in loc, VOL. 11.—8
be πὰ ed more in harmony with the spirit of the biblical morality, the common scriptural ground being that it is ours to obey the commands of the moral law, and that God may be trusted for the consequences. Fora full discussion of the lie of exigency in the light of Christian principles, see Martensen’s Christian Ethics (Eng. tr. *), vol. ii p. 216 ff., also Newman Smyth’s Christian Ethics, p. 392 ff. W. P. PATERSON.
LIE.—The verb to lie was formerly used in the sense of pass the night, lodge, sleep. We find an example of this in is 1418 ‘ All the kings of the nations, even all of them, lie in glory, every one in his own house’ (3327; RV ‘sleep,’ as Gen. Bible): οὗ. Jos 2! AVm ‘and lay there,’ for text ‘and lodged there’ (7332301). So North, Plutarch, ‘Demetrius,’ p. 895, ‘For they ordained that the place behind the Temple of Minerva called Par- thenon (as who wont say, the temple of the Virgin) should be prepared fees his house to lye in’; and Bunyan, PP (Clar. Press ed. p. 240), ‘Then they called for the Master of the House, and he came to them. So they asked if they might lie there that night?’ On which Venables remarks, ‘To lie continued in familiar use till the end of the last century for to stop the night at a place. This is the hinge of Walton’s witty translation of Sir Henry Wotton’s definition of an ambassador—‘“‘ an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.”’