duty devolving upon them as magistrates and administrators of local affairs. (On Deu 19:13, see Deu 8:8 and Deu 8:5.)
Verse 14
The prohibition against Removing a Neighbour's Landmark, which his ancestors had placed, is inserted here, not because landmarks were of special importance in relation to the free cities, and the removal of them might possibly be fatal to the unintentional manslayer (as Clericus and Rosenmüller assume), for the general terms of the prohibition are at variance with this, viz., “thy neighbour's landmark,” and “in thine inheritance which thou shalt inherit in the land;” but on account of the close connection in which a man's possession as the means of his support stood to the life of the man himself, “because property by which life is supported participates in the sacredness of life itself, just as in Deu 20:19-20, sparing the fruit-trees is mentioned in connection with the men who were to be spared” (Schultz). A curse was to be pronounced upon the remover of landmarks, according to Deu 27:17, just as upon one who cursed his father, who led a blind man astray, or perverted the rights of orphans and widows (cf. Hos 5:10; Pro 22:28; Pro 23:10). Landmarks were regarded as sacred among other nations also; by the Romans, for example, they were held to be so sacred, that whoever removed them was to be put to death.
verses 15-16
The Punishment of a False Witness. - To secure life and property against false accusations, Moses lays down the law in Deu 19:15, that one witness only was not “to rise up against any one with reference to any crime or sin, with every sin that one commits” (i.e., to appear before a court of justice, or be accepted as sufficient), but everything was to be established upon the testimony of two or three witnesses. The rule laid down in Deu 17:6 and Num 35:30 for capital crimes, is raised hereby into a law of general application (see at Num 35:30). קוּם (in Deu 19:15), to stand, i.e., to acquire legal force. - But as it was not always possible to bring forward two or three witnesses, and the statement of one witness could not well be disregarded, in Deu 19:16-18 Moses refers accusations of this kind to the higher tribunal at the sanctuary for investigation and decision, and appoints the same punishment for a false witness, which would have fallen upon the person accused, if he had been convicted of the crime with which he was charged. סרה בּו לענות, “to testify against his departure,” sc., from the law of God, not merely falling away into idolatry (Deu 13:6), but any
