This week we continue with translating the Chofetz Chaim’s Sefer entitled, “Sfas Tamim.”
Sefas Tamim, from which our foundation takes its name, focuses on the importance of honesty in word and deed. We continue to translate Chapter 1, “Defining Deceit”.
“Also, even if within the framework of the speaker’s deceit he isn't actually stealing anything from his fellow Jew that was not already his, and there is no element of extortion, but the speaker wants a future “good” that is intended for his fellow Jew, and thus the speaker stalks him to take it for himself with his lying words, or the speaker uses his lies to cause his fellow Jew to give him something intended for someone else, this too is considered ‘deceitful’. In so doing the essential punishment he will receive is for the lie, but here his punishment is amplified since he caused, ‘bad’ to someone else.
How hateful and disgusting is this character trait (Mirmah – deceit) before HaKadosh Boruch Hu? That He withdraws His providence from this person, as the verse states (Tehillim 101:7) ‘Those who deceive will not sit in the midst of My house.’ Chazal have illustrated this concept with the following parable: ‘A king proclaimed throughout his entire country, “Whoever is not loyal to my monarchy must leave this country and if not, his head will be severed from his body.”’ In a comparable sense, this is what HaKadosh Boruch Hu said, ‘Whoever has a passion for lying is not fit to exist in My universe, since I have created the universe with ‘truth’. For without truth, the universe cannot continue to exist, and lies cannot coexist with truth.”
