<Ul> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> </Ul> <P> "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour" is the ninth (respectively the eighth according to the Catholic and Lutheran count) of the Ten Commandments, which are widely understood as moral imperatives by Jewish scholars, Catholic scholars, and Post-Reformation scholars . </P> <P> Today, most cultures retain a distinction between lying in general (which is discouraged under most, but not all, circumstances) versus perjury (which is always unlawful under criminal law and liable to punishment). Similarly, historically in Jewish tradition, a distinction was made between lying in general and bearing false witness (perjury) specifically . On the one hand, bearing false witness (perjury) was always prohibited according to the decalogue's commandement against bearing false witness, yet on the other hand, lying in general was acknowledged to be, in certain circumstances "permissible or even commendable" when it was a white lie, and it was done while not under oath, and it was not "harmful to someone else". </P> <P> The book of Exodus describes the Ten Commandments as being spoken by God, inscribed on two stone tablets by the finger of God, broken by Moses, and rewritten on replacements stones by the LORD . </P>

What does thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour mean