Verse 16. - To testify against himthat which is wrong; literally, to testify against him defection, i.e. from the Law of God. The speaker has apparently in view here all such defections from the Law as would entail punishment on the convicted offender. In Deuteronomy 13:5 [6], indeed, the crime described here as "that which is wrong" (margin, "falling away") is specially the crime of apostasy to idolatry; but the word (סָרָה), though usually expressing apostasy from Jehovah, has properly the general sense of a deflection from a prescribed course (from סוּר, to go off, to go aside), and so may describe any departure from what is constituted right.
19:15-21 Sentence should never be passed upon the testimony of one witness alone. A false witness should suffer the same punishment which he sought to have inflicted upon the person he accused. Nor could any law be more just. Let all Christians not only be cautious in bearing witness in public, but be careful not to join in private slanders; and let all whose consciences accuse them of crime, without delay flee for refuge to the hope set before them in Jesus Christ.
If a false witness rise up against any man,.... In a court of judicature:
to testify against him: that which is not true of him, let it be in what case it will; Aben Ezra instances in idolatry, but it holds good of any other.
to testify against him: that which is not true of him, let it be in what case it will; Aben Ezra instances in idolatry, but it holds good of any other.