From the Sources by Eliezer Segal: Honest to Goodness

by Eliezer Segal

(AJNews) – A well-known platitude has it that “it’s a sin to tell a lie,” and many people seriously believe that the Bible forbids uttering any untruths.

Yes, one of the Ten Commandments forbids bearing false witness, but this seems to refer to specific judicial contexts which are likely also to involve perjury and the profanation of the Lord’s name. To be sure, a venerable Christian tradition, formulated by prominent theologians like Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, argues that all falsehoods are sinful, though some are more serious than others. And among Jewish philosophers, Maimonidees made an exception to his usual advocacy of the “middle way,” by insisting that a virtuous person should eschew all forms of falsehood. “It is forbidden to utter a single word of deception or fraud. Rather, one should have only truthful speech, a proper spirit and a heart pure from all deceit and trickery.”

Although dishonesty is not recommended as a general course of behaviour, there are numerous stories in the Bible where the heroes lie or mislead, and do not appear to be censured for it.

For example: When our aging ancestor Abraham realized that the time had come to find a wife for his son Isaac, he was conscious of his predicament: As the sole member of the Hebrew community that was dedicated to serving the one universal God, how could he expect to find a suitable young lady to integrate into his family and monotheistic movement?

One thing Abraham was sure of was that the local Canaanite populace were unacceptable to him as spouses or inlaws. With that in mind, he instructed his trusted servant, “thou shalt not take a wife unto my son of the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I dwell. But thou shalt go unto my land, and to my birthplace, and take a wife unto my son Isaac.”

When the servant finally arrived in Nahor and was convinced that Rebekah would be an ideal mate for Isaac, he reported to her family the instructions he had received. However, according to his version of the events, Abraham had stipulated “thou shalt go unto my father’s house, and to my kindred, and take a wife unto my son.” That is to say, apparently, that the patriarch had explicitly demanded that Isaac’s wife must be a member of Abraham’s family, and not merely a resident of his home town, as had been stated in the Torah’s original third-person narration.

The fifteenth-century Spanish exegete Rabbi Isaac Arama understood that this manipulation of the truth was part of the servant’s ingenious negotiating strategy. He wanted Rebekah’s family to think that, though Nahor may have been Abraham’s first preference for finding a bride, the patriarch was not entirely rejecting the possibility of settling for a local Canaanite girl (though of course he really was!) if the negotiations over Rebekah fell through. Rabbi Arama concluded that “this kind of deviousness was justified in order to bring about the divine purpose” of uniting Isaac and Rebekah.

The servant’s misrepresentation also bothered Arama’s contemporary Don Isaac Abravanel. He explained that it was intended to enhance the attractiveness of his offer by making Rebekah’s family feel specially honoured by being chosen, “so that they would think that Abraham was very desirous of their relationship.” To assist in achieving that noble objective overrides the lesser prohibition of uttering falsehoods, and hence his behaviour should be deemed unobjectionable.

The fourth-century Babylonian teacher Rava once observed cynically that “there is no truth in the world.” Then he made the acquaintance of a certain Rav Tavut or Tavyomei who insisted that he would never tell a lie even if tempted by all the world’s wealth.

This honest man then told Rava about his visit to a locality named Kushta (Aramaic for “truth”; by medieval convention the name Kushta became the Hebrew equivalent for Constantinople). The residents of that place never departed from the truth, a virtue that they believed safeguarded them all from premature deaths. Rav Tavut relocated there, married a local girl and raised a family.

All was well until one day when a neighbour came knocking on their door while his wife was washing her hair. According to the standards of propriety in those days, it was considered vulgar to speak of such matters, so he simply said that his wife was not home. This violation of the town’s commitment to uncompromising truthfulness undermined their immunity to premature death—resulting in the deaths of his two innocent children. The townspeople realized what had happened and asked him to leave in order to avoid causing further suffering.

The ancient Jewish sages observed that even God, who is equated with Truth, is not above bending the truth for a legitimate purpose.

Thus, when Sarah heard the divine promise that she would bear a child at the age of ninety, the Torah says that she laughed, thinking that she was too old “and my husband is old.” But when God reported that conversation to Abraham, he deleted her comment about her husband’s age. The rabbis understood that the deletion was intended to spare Abraham’s feelings and avoid any resentment that might threaten the couple’s domestic harmony. From this they concluded, “Great is peace, as even the blessed Holy One strayed from the truth for its sake.”

The issue is really more nuanced than it at first appears. The Hebrew word “emet” that is usually translated as “truth” does not really denote mere factual accuracy, but rather trustworthiness and other noble metaphysical and moral ideals—whose achievement might actually conflict with the demands of simple factual truth. Indeed, the upholding of peace can outweigh the virtues of brutal honesty.

Nevertheless, in our current political and commercial cultures, which are steeped in shameless fraudulence, it is surely preferable to minimize our tolerance of untruthfulness.

This, at least, is how I see the issue.

Honestly.