Exodus 23:1 You shall not raise a false report: put not your hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness. It is AElian's observation, how that men being in danger to be stung by scorpions, use to place their beds in water, yet the politic serpents have a device to reach them: they get up to the top of the house, where one takes hold, the next hangs at the end of him, a third upon the second, a fourth upon the third, and so making a kind of serpentine rope, they at last wound the man. And thus it is, that amongst scandalizers and slanderers, one begins to whisper, another makes it a report, a third enlargeth it to a dangerous calumny, a fourth divulgeth it for a truth. So the innocent man's good name, which, like a merchant's wealth, got in many years, and lost in an hour, is maimed, and so secretly traduced, that it is somewhat hard to find out the villain that did it. (J. Spencer.) Parallel Verses KJV: Thou shalt not raise a false report: put not thine hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness. |
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