Do not be a witness against your neighbor without cause,For would you deceive with your lips?
Do not say, “I will do to him just as he has done to me;I will render to the man according to his work.”
Proverbs 24:28–29 · NKJVPart of Do Not Testify Without Cause, Proverbs 24:28–29.
Quick answer
Do not take the stand against your neighbor when you have no real cause. The second line asks whether you intend to lie, and the question is doing the work.
Read the whole unit
Read the whole unit
The two verses are a mechanism and its motive. Verse 28 forbids the act, testifying with nothing behind it, and the NKJV footnotes that the ancient versions read the second line as a flat command, do not deceive, rather than as a question. Either way the exposure is the same: a witness without cause is a witness with a reason, and the reason is rarely the truth.
Verse 29 supplies the reason and it is grievance. This is the most common motive for a false witness and the least likely to feel like malice from inside, because it presents itself as evenness. He did it to me, so I do it to him. What makes this saying remarkable is its last clause, because the chapter has already used those exact words about God. At 24:12 the closing line was "will He not render to each man according to his deeds," and here the man says "I will render to the man according to his work." Same verb, same phrase, one subject swapped. The chapter says God does this and you do not, and it never explains the difference, which is the strongest way it could have made the point. The book says the same thing at 20:22 and hands the waiting to the LORD.
What this verse contributes
the prohibited act, and the question that exposes what testifying without cause actually requires.
The other half
And do not tell yourself the sentence that would justify it. Paying a man back in kind sounds like fairness and the saying refuses it outright.
Related: Proverbs 24:12 · Proverbs 20:22 · Romans 12:19 · Proverbs 25:18
New King James Version®, Copyright © 1982, Thomas Nelson. All rights reserved. Full copyright information. Scripture provided by API.Bible.
Go Deeper
If this verse has been used to put weight on you that it was never carrying, ask about it directly.