“Master, which is the great commandment of the law?”

The Lord’s answer was: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.

“This is the first and great commandment.

“And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

“On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” (Matt. 22:36–40).

Thus our obedience to the commandment not to bear false witness should be rooted in both our love of God and our love of our fellowmen. But the violation of the ninth commandment is among the most common of sins. Elder Adam S. Bennion of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles wrote:

“Murder, adultery, and stealing, dealing respectively with life, virtue, and property, are generally considered more serious offenses before the law than the bearing of false witness. And yet, what the latter may lack in severity, it more than makes up for in prevalence” (“The Ninth Commandment,” in The Ten Commandments Today, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1955, p. 134).

Whereas murder involves the taking of human life, bearing false witness involves the destruction of character and reputation. To do so maliciously is the sin of calumny, or character assassination, described in Shakespeare’s Othello:

Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing;
’Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him
And makes me poor indeed.
(Act 3, sc. 3, lines 157–61)