The following are some interesting excerpts from:
Yael Shemesh, “Lies
by Prophets and Other Lies in the Hebrew Bible,” Journal of the Ancient Near
Eastern Society 29 (2002):81-95
. . . one finds
biblical narratives in which the narrator's attitude to the falsehoold
described is undoubtedly favorable . . . Included in this category are various
instances of lies intended to save the liar's life (The text of the Torah, “You
shall keep My laws and My rules, by the pursuit of which man shall live: I am
the Lord” (Lev. 18:5; cf. Ezek. 20:11, 13, 21), inspired the following comment
by the Sages of the Talmud: “by . . . which man shall live—and not die,” on
which they based the principle that danger to life overrides almost all the
religious precepts (BT Yoma 85b).) or altruistic lies (mainly on the part of
women).
Thus, for example,
David lies to Ahimelech (1 Sam. 21:3) and misleads King Achish of Gath (1 Sam.
21:14) in order to save his own life. Saul’s daughter Michal lies to her
father’s messengers in order to save her husband David’s life (1 Sam.
19:11–16), and then lies to her father in order to escape his rage (1 Sam.
19:17). Jonathan, too, lies to his father to save his friend David’s life (1
Sam. 20:28–29), and the woman from Bahurim lies to Absalom’s servants to save
David’s spies Ahimaaz and Jonathan, hidden in the well in her courtyard (2 Sam.
17:18–20). Proof that God may actually approve of such lies may be derived from
His rewarding of the midwives in Egypt, who lied to Pharaoh out of compassion
for the lives of the male children born to the Hebrew women (Exod. 1:15–21). A
further indication to that effect is the narrator’s comment concerning Hushai’s
deception of Absalom by pretending to support him: “The Lord had decreed that
Ahithophel’s sound advice be nullified, in order that the Lord might bring ruin
upon Absalom” (2 Sam. 17:14). A forgiving view of deception may also be
discerned in cases where persons lie to secure what belongs to them by right
but has been unjustly withheld.
A forgiving view of
deception may also be discerned in cases where persons lie to secure what
belongs to them by right but has been unjustly withheld. Thus, the initiative
taken by Judah’s
daughter-in-law Tamar, who disguises herself as a prostitute in order to become
pregnant by him after his failure to marry her to his son Shelah, is described
in a favorable light, and indeed justified by Judah himself in the narrative
(Gen. 38:26). Tamar is rewarded for her subterfuge by the birth of the twins
Perez and Zerah, through whom the tribe of Judah is established (Gen.
38:27–30). (p. 84)
. . . God sometimes
adopts deceptive measures (Gen. 2:17; 18:13; Exod. 3:22; 1 Kgs. 22:19-23), and
also instructs a genuine prophet to lie (Exod. 3:18; 1 Sam 16:2). (p. 85)
[On the character of
God and texts that speak of his fidelity] Perhaps a partial solution to the
problem would be the following observation: if God gave advance warning that,
under certain circumstances, God would mislead humanity, God’s falsehood would
raise fewer difficulties. One might add that divine deception, by analogy with
human deception, is justified by the theological maxim, “With the pure You act
in purity, and with the perverse You are wily” (2 Sam. 22:27; Ps. 18:27). That
is to say, God treats human beings in accord with their own actions. (p. 86)
“I was
presenting my petition to the king” (Jer. 38:26)
The
protagonist of my last example is Jeremiah—a representative of classical
prophecy. Unlike Abraham and Elisha, who
resort to misleading at their own initiative, and unlike Moses and Samuel, who
mislead a king (Pharaoh, Saul) upon God’s instructions, Jeremiah is forced to
deceive the officials on orders from King Zedekiah. After Jeremiah’s secret
encounter with Zedekiah, on which occasion he tells the king in God’s name of
the calamity that will befall him and Judah in general if he does not surrender
to the Babylonians, Zedekiah advises the prophet that, for both their sakes, (To
my mind, Zedekiah, in his last words to Jeremiah, “that you may not die,” is
not threatening to put the prophet to death if he disobeys, but warning him
that if the officials discover the real content of the conversation they will
kill him.) should he be interrogated by the officials about the content of
their conversation, he should tell them, “I was presenting my petition to the
king not to send me back to the house of Jonathan to die there” (Jer. 38:24–26).
And Jeremiah does indeed do “just as the king had instructed him” (v. 27). Eva
Osswald, in her study of false prophets, cites this episode to support her
thesis that the distinction between true and false prophets cannot be based on
an ethical criterion. Even the canonical prophets, she writes, resorted at
times to unethical deeds, such as Hosea’s marriage to a whore (Hos. 1:2–3) and
Jeremiah’s lie to the officials. Other scholars have defended Jeremiah,
justifying the deceit in one way or another. On the other hand, in the view of
scholars who believe Jer. 38:14–28 to be a parallel tradition to the text of
Jer. 37:17–21, Jeremiah was telling the truth, for he did indeed entreat the
king not to send him back to the house of the scribe Jonathan (37:20). As Jones
writes, Jeremiah’s response to the officials “has the advantage of being both
convincing and true.” As to those scholars who suggest some kind of textual
error and believe 38:14b–27 to be the immediate chronological sequel to
37:17–20, continuing the king’s conversation with the prophet, Jeremiah did not
tell a lie, only concealing the political portion of the encounter. However,
even if we accept the biblical text as it is, considering ch. 38 to be the
chronological sequel to ch. 37, recounting an event other than (and later than)
that described in ch. 37, Jeremiah is not, formally speaking, telling an
outright lie: he is simply telling the officials what he said to the king— albeit
at a previous meeting.
Common
to all these cases is that the prophet has not uttered an outright lie, but employed
a technique of telling a half-truth (Abraham, Moses, Samuel, and Jeremiah) or
using ambiguity (Elisha). Formally speaking, therefore, one might say that he
has not told a lie, although his intention was undoubtedly to mislead another
person. (pp. 92-93)
