Section 1 of 5 · To protect yourself · Verse 1 of 4
Lying lips are detestable to the LORD, but those who deal faithfully are His delight.Proverbs 12:22
"Detestable" and "delight" are both feeling words applied to God, which is unusual for a proverb — most of them describe consequences instead. And the opposite of lying here is not truth-telling but dealing faithfully, which is a word about reliability over time rather than accuracy in a single sentence.
Most people who look this up have already told one.
That changes what a page like this should do. A list of prohibitions is useful before the fact and nearly useless after it, and by the time somebody is searching, the useful question is not whether lying is wrong. It is what this particular lie is doing, and what it would cost to undo.
So these are sorted by kind. The lie told to protect yourself is a different mechanism from the lie that lands on someone else, and both are different from the one you have told yourself so consistently that you no longer register it as a claim. Scripture distinguishes between them and uses different language for each — detestable, a club or a sword, a heart deceived.
The section on false witness is the harshest, and that is proportionate. Proverbs 25:18 compares it to a weapon, and it means an actual weapon: a club, a sword, a sharp arrow. Two verses later comes the one about the person who damages somebody and then says "I was only joking," which is the most modern-sounding line in the entire pool.
The last section is the one competitors leave out. It is for the position you are actually in — the lie is already told, and the question is what happens now. What the texts offer there is not absolution on request. Proverbs 28:13 attaches two verbs to the way out, confess and renounce, and the second one is the expensive half.
One flag. John 8:32 — "the truth will set you free" — appears on almost every page like this as a general slogan about honesty. In context it is not about truth-telling at all. That note is on the verse.
Chapter 1
The ordinary kind — the softened number, the reason you did not come, the version where you handled it better than you did. Two of these four give a reason for stopping that is not about punishment, and one of them is about arithmetic: a lie has to be maintained, and truth does not.
Lying lips are detestable to the LORD, but those who deal faithfully are His delight.Proverbs 12:22 · BSB
"Detestable" and "delight" are both feeling words applied to God, which is unusual for a proverb — most of them describe consequences instead. And the opposite of lying here is not truth-telling but dealing faithfully, which is a word about reliability over time rather than accuracy in a single sentence.
Truthful lips endure forever, but a lying tongue lasts only a moment.Proverbs 12:19 · BSB
A claim about durability rather than morality. The proverb is describing maintenance costs: a lie has a shelf life and requires resupply, while the truth needs nothing done to it after it is said. Anyone who has kept one going for a while has already tested this and knows the accounting is correct.
Do not lie to one another, since you have taken off the old self with its practices,Colossians 3:9 · BSB
The reason attached is not a rule but a wardrobe — you have taken off the old self, so the practices that came with it no longer fit. Paul is arguing from identity rather than from prohibition, which puts the lie in the category of something out of character instead of something forbidden.
Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one another.Ephesians 4:25 · BSB
The reason given is anatomical: we are members of one another. Paul's argument is that lying to a neighbour is a body misinforming itself, which reframes it from a moral failing into a malfunction. "Put off" is the same clothing verb, and it implies deliberate removal rather than gradual improvement.
Chapter 2
Scripture reserves its hardest language for this category, and the imagery is violent on purpose — a club, a sword, a sharp arrow, firebrands. These are not proverbs about etiquette. They are about damage done to a person who was not in the room.
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.Exodus 20:16 · BSB
Nine words, and the scope is narrower than it is usually quoted as. It does not prohibit lying in general — it prohibits testimony against a specific person, which was a matter of life and death in a legal system with no forensics. The commandment protects the neighbour, not the abstract idea of truth.
One of the ten given at Sinai. In a court that ran on witnesses, a false one could have someone executed, and Deuteronomy assigns the accuser the penalty they sought.
Like a club or sword or sharp arrow is a man who bears false witness against his neighbor.Proverbs 25:18 · BSB
Three weapons, and they are graded — a club breaks, a sword cuts, an arrow reaches someone at distance. The last one is the point. False witness works on a person who is not present to respond, which is the property that makes it more like a projectile than like a fight.
Like a madman shooting firebrands and deadly arrows, so is the man who deceives his neighbor and says, “I was only joking!”Proverbs 26:18-19 · BSB
The most contemporary sentence in this whole category. The offence is not the deception alone but the retreat afterwards — I was only joking — and the proverb answers it by comparing the person to someone firing burning arrows and then claiming it was in fun. The damage does not become smaller because the intent is reclassified.
A false witness will not go unpunished, and one who utters lies will not escape.Proverbs 19:5 · BSB
Two clauses saying nearly the same thing, which in Hebrew poetry is emphasis rather than repetition. What is being insisted on is that the outcome is not avoidable — not go unpunished, not escape. The proverb makes no claim about when, which is the part that makes it bearable to read and hard to use as a threat.
“You shall not spread a false report. Do not join the wicked by being a malicious witness.Exodus 23:1 · BSB
Two separate offences: starting a false report, and joining one already in motion. The second is the interesting one, because it names passing something along as its own act rather than as a lesser version of inventing it. Nothing in the verse allows for having heard it from somebody reliable.
Chapter 3
The hardest category to work on, because there is no listener to correct you. Three of these describe a person whose account of themselves has come apart from what they do, and none of them frame it as hypocrisy in the ordinary sense — the deceived party is the speaker.
If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not bridle his tongue, he deceives his heart and his religion is worthless.James 1:26 · BSB
Read who gets deceived: his own heart. James is not describing someone fooling other people while knowing better — the damage runs inward first. And the test he applies is not belief or attendance but a bridled tongue, which makes speech the diagnostic for something much larger than speech.
If we say we have fellowship with Him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.1 John 1:6 · BSB
The lie John names is not a spoken sentence about the facts. It is a claim about a relationship, contradicted by where the person is walking, and he says the result is that they do not practise the truth. Truth is being treated as something done rather than something stated, which widens the category considerably.
If anyone says, “I know Him,” but does not keep His commandments, he is a liar, and the truth is not in him.1 John 2:4 · BSB
The word is liar and John applies it to someone who may be entirely sincere. That is what makes this uncomfortable — sincerity is not one of the variables. The test is conduct against claim, and he runs it without asking what the person intended or how strongly they felt about it.
Surely You desire truth in the inmost being; You teach me wisdom in the inmost place.Psalm 51:6 · BSB
"Inmost being" locates the concern well behind anything anyone else can inspect. And notice that the second half is a request for teaching rather than a resolution to do better — David treats interior honesty as something he needs to be shown rather than something he can decide on.
Written after Nathan confronted him about Bathsheba and Uriah — a cover-up that had lasted roughly a year before anyone named it.
A hateful man disguises himself with his speech, but he lays up deceit in his heart.Proverbs 26:24 · BSB
Two locations in one sentence: the speech, where the disguise is, and the heart, where the deceit is stored. The verb "lays up" is a storage word, the kind used for provisions. It describes something accumulated and kept rather than a single act, which is the difference between a lie and a habit.
Chapter 4
Telling the truth is expensive or it would not need commanding. These four are about the price — a manner that has to be maintained, judgments that have to be rendered, a plainness that removes your room to manoeuvre, and a life that can be checked.
Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into Christ Himself, who is the head.Ephesians 4:15 · BSB
The phrase is a single instruction, not two competing ones. Paul does not offer a balance between honesty and kindness where you trade some of each — the truth is to be spoken in love, as a manner rather than a discount. Used to justify saying something harsh, the verse has been read backwards.
These are the things you must do: Speak truth to one another, render true and sound judgments in your gates,Zechariah 8:16 · BSB
It opens as a list of required actions and then names where they happen: in your gates, which is the town square and the courthouse. The honesty commanded here is civic rather than private. Zechariah is describing the speech of a functioning community, not the conscience of an individual.
Above all, my brothers, do not swear, not by heaven or earth or by any other oath. Simply let your “Yes” be yes, and your “No,” no, so that you will not fall under judgment.James 5:12 · BSB
The argument against oaths is that they imply a two-tier system, where ordinary speech is less binding than sworn speech. James collapses the tiers. Let your yes be yes — which removes every phrase people use to signal that this time they really mean it, and makes the plain sentence carry the full weight.
He who walks in integrity walks securely, but he who perverts his ways will be found out.Proverbs 10:9 · BSB
"Walks securely" is about footing, not about safety from harm. The proverb is describing what it is like to move through life without having to remember anything — no version to keep straight, no room you cannot enter. The second half states the alternative outcome as discovery rather than punishment.
Chapter 5
The section for where you actually are. What these offer is not a way to feel better about it — the route described has two steps, and the second one involves the other person. Read the note on John 8:32 before you take it as a general slogan about honesty.
Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”John 8:32 · BSB
Almost always quoted as a maxim about honesty being liberating, and that is not what it says. The sentence is the second half of a condition — if you continue in My word — and "the truth" refers to his teaching, not to accurate statements in general. It is a promise about a person, addressed to people who had just believed him.
Spoken to Jews who had believed him. The freedom under discussion in the following verses is freedom from slavery to sin, and his hearers immediately object that they have never been slaves.
Remove me from the path of deceit and graciously grant me Your law.Psalm 119:29 · BSB
"Remove me" is a request to be relocated rather than corrected, and the psalmist describes deceit as a path — something already being walked, with distance behind it. That is a more accurate picture than a single wrong choice, and it explains why the request is for extraction rather than for resolve.
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.1 John 1:9 · BSB
The grounds are faithfulness and justice rather than leniency. Two outcomes are named: forgiving, and cleansing — and they are listed as separate operations.
He who conceals his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them will find mercy.Proverbs 28:13 · BSB
Two verbs guard the exit: confess and renounce. Confessing is the cheap half; renouncing is where the arrangement you were protecting has to end.
Not in context, though it is quoted that way almost everywhere. John 8:32 is the back half of a conditional sentence that begins "if you continue in My word" — the truth in view is Jesus's teaching, and the freedom described over the next several verses is freedom from slavery to sin. His hearers understood him well enough to object that they had never been slaves to anyone. Honesty is treated seriously all over Scripture; this particular verse is about something else.
The narrative books contain cases that are not condemned and are sometimes commended. The Hebrew midwives deceive Pharaoh about the newborns and Exodus says God dealt well with them. Rahab hides Israelite spies and lies about it, and both Hebrews and James later name her approvingly. Neither passage frames the lie itself as good; both concern protecting someone from death. The commandments and proverbs on this page address false witness and deception for advantage, which is a different situation, and they are not softened by these cases.
Exodus 23:1 treats spreading a false report and joining one already circulating as two separate offences, which closes the usual defence of having heard it from someone. Proverbs 25:18 compares false witness to a club, a sword and an arrow — the arrow being the one that reaches a person who is not there to answer. Proverbs 26:18-19 addresses the retreat that follows, where the damage is reclassified as a joke, and answers that the reclassification changes nothing about what landed.
Proverbs 28:13 gives two verbs and the order matters: confess and renounce. Confessing is the part that can be done in private and often is; renouncing means ending whatever the lie was protecting, which is usually the expensive half and the reason people stop after the first step. 1 John 1:9 names two outcomes rather than one — forgiving and cleansing — and grounds them in God being faithful and just rather than in being lenient about it.
From the hundred verses most voted for this topic on OpenBible.info, seventy-six of which had a real connection rather than a keyword match. Rather than ranking them by popularity into one long list of prohibitions, they were sorted by the kind of lie involved, and a final section was added for the reader who has already told one — which is, on the evidence of how people search this, most of them. Two verses whose home pages are elsewhere on this site appear here in brief.
