Start with the plain command, because it really is plain, and nothing that follows erases it.
"Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour."
Proverbs adds its own weight to the same theme, more than once, in case anyone missed it the first time:
"Lying lips are abomination to the LORD: but they that deal truly are his delight."
Read those two verses alone and the question in this article's title looks like it has an easy answer. It doesn't, because Scripture itself introduces the complication, not a modern ethicist looking for a loophole.
Rahab, and the lie James calls righteous
Joshua sends two spies into Jericho. Rahab hides them on her roof, then tells the king's men something that isn't true:
"And the woman took the two men, and hid them, and said thus, There came men unto me, but I wist not whence they were: And it came to pass about the time of shutting of the gate, when it was dark, that the men went out: whither the men went I wot not: pursue after them quickly; for ye shall overtake them."
She knew exactly where they were. She sent the pursuers the wrong direction on purpose. That is, by any plain reading, a lie. Centuries later, James holds her up as an example of faith proven by action, not despite this episode but specifically because of it:
"Likewise also was not Rahab the harlot justified by works, when she had received the messengers, and had sent them out another way?"
James doesn't pause to add a footnote correcting the method. He commends the whole episode: receiving the spies, hiding them, sending pursuers off course. Hebrews 11 lists her in the great hall of faith for the same act.
A similar pattern shows up earlier, with less fanfare, in Exodus. Pharaoh orders the Hebrew midwives to kill newborn boys. They don't, and when questioned, they tell him something evasive rather than the plain truth:
"And the midwives said unto Pharaoh, Because the Hebrew women are not as the Egyptian women; for they are lively, and are delivered ere the midwives come in unto them. Therefore God dealt well with the midwives: and the people multiplied, and waxed very mighty."
"God dealt well with the midwives" is not the language of Scripture rebuking them for something regrettable they got away with. It reads as approval, not tolerance.
Two honest ways serious Christians read this
This is where the debate actually lives, and it's an old one, running through centuries of Christian ethics, not something a modern search engine invented. Two positions, both held by careful readers of Scripture:
Some hold that lying is always wrong, full stop, and that God blessed Rahab and the midwives for their courage and their protection of innocent life, not for the specific deception itself. On this view, the lie was a flaw riding alongside genuine faith, the way a good person's actions can still contain a wrong element that the text doesn't stop to isolate and condemn separately.
Others hold that the ninth commandment addresses bearing false witness against a neighbour, testimony that harms an innocent party, and that deceiving someone actively bent on murdering innocents isn't the kind of act that commandment was written to cover. On this view, Rahab and the midwives didn't break the command at all; they were never obligated to hand truthful information to men seeking to kill, and Scripture's approval of them is approval of the whole act, deception included.
Neither camp is a fringe position invented to dodge an inconvenient verse. Augustine argued for something close to the first view. Other serious theologians across church history have argued the second. This article isn't going to pick a winner, because picking one would misrepresent how unsettled this genuinely is among people who take Scripture with equal seriousness.
Proverbs 12:22 in four voices — a taste of how Bible Voice reads Scripture
"Deal truly" is doing a lot of work in that second half. It's not just "don't say false things," it's a whole posture of being someone people can trust at all.
Abomination is a strong word for Proverbs to reach for. It shows up for idolatry, for injustice. Lying gets filed in that same category, which tells you the weight this book assigns it.
Two groups named here, liars and the truthful, and only one gets called God's delight. The proverb isn't neutral about which side you want to be standing on.
I've come to think "delight" is the operative word here, more than "abomination." God isn't just tolerating honesty in us, He takes pleasure in it.
What both readings agree on
Whichever side you land on, both agree on more than they disagree. Neither view treats lying as a casual, everyday option. Neither uses Rahab as a general license to deceive whenever it's convenient or self-serving. The examples Scripture actually commends involve protecting innocent life from people actively bent on killing it, not covering an affair, padding a resume, or avoiding an awkward conversation. Stretching Rahab to justify ordinary dishonesty is a much bigger leap than either camp above is actually making.
For reflection
Let the answer become prayer
After reading an answer to "Is lying ever okay?," pause before moving on. Information can settle in the mind quickly; wisdom usually asks for a slower kind of attention.
- What does this reveal about God's character?
- What does it ask you to release, confess, receive, or practice?
- What would change if you carried this answer with gentleness instead of pressure?
Prayer: Lord, do not let this stay as information only. Turn what is true into trust, repentance, courage, and love.
"Was not Rahab the harlot justified by works, when she had received the messengers, and had sent them out another way?"
Rahab's story runs from Joshua 2 through her unlikely place in Jesus' own genealogy in Matthew 1. Hear the whole arc read aloud, in a voice built for how you actually process a hard question.
Wrestle with Rahab's storySo: is lying ever okay? Scripture gives a clear general command against it and at least two commended exceptions in the hardest circumstances imaginable. Serious Christians disagree about how to hold those together, and that disagreement is old, respectable, and not going to be settled by one article. What it isn't is a free pass for ordinary dishonesty, on either reading.