Article 8. The Eighth Commandment

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.1

It was said to the men of old, “You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.”2

The eighth commandment forbids misrepresenting the truth in our relations with others. This moral prescription flows from the vocation of the holy people to bear witness to their God who is the truth and wills the truth. Offenses against the truth express by word or deed a refusal to commit oneself to moral uprightness: they are fundamental infidelities to God and, in this sense, they undermine the foundations of the covenant.