Does the Bible contain words of lies?

Four words in Psalm 14

The Bible contains the sentence “There is no God.” It appears in Psalm 14:1, and again, word for word, in Psalm 53:1.

But read the whole verse before anyone quotes it against you.

The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.”

Psalm 14:1 (NASB)

Take note of the first clause. The speaker is the fool, and David quotes him in order to name him.

Here, we must separate two kinds of words in the Bible. There are words spoken in Scripture, and there are words spoken by Scripture. The first kind includes the words of Satan, false prophets, liars, and fools. The second kind is what God says, and what the Bible teaches as true.

The Bible never claims that every character in it tells the truth. It claims that it reports every character truly. When a liar speaks, the Bible quotes him accurately, and that is a truthful record of a lie.

Think of a court transcript. A witness commits perjury on the stand, and the stenographer types every false word. Is the transcript a lie? Of course not. It would become a lie only if the stenographer cleaned up the testimony.

The first lie is one word long

The first lie in the Bible comes in Genesis 3, and Satan doesn’t invent a new sentence for it. Instead, he borrows God’s own sentence and edits it by a single word.

In Genesis 2:17, God warns the man about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The Hebrew of the warning is two words, מוֹת תָּמוּת, môt tāmût, which literally reads “dying, you shall die.”

In Genesis 3:4, the serpent repeats those same two words to the woman. Then he adds one word in front: לֹא, lōʾ, “not.”

One word. That was all it took.

Moses recorded the serpent’s sentence exactly as it was spoken, and he also recorded what followed. The man and the woman ate, and then they hid from God among the trees. Then they heard the sentence pronounced on them: “to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19). As Paul puts it, through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin (Romans 5:12).

So the narrative itself refutes the very lie it records. That is how the Bible handles falsehood, from the first book to the last.

Ask what Jesus said

“What did Jesus say?” is a question we must always raise when we interpret the Old Testament. Here, Jesus said it in no uncertain terms.

Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

John 8:44 (NASB)

The Greek word Jesus uses is ψεύστης, pseustēs, which means “liar.” He does not soften it, and neither should we.

Therefore, the Bible does more than record the first lie. It names the liar, and it traces every later lie back to its father.

From the record

Genesis 3 is not an exception, for liars speak all through the Bible. In each case, the falsehood is quoted, not affirmed. Somewhere near it, often in the same chapter, the text gives the ruling.

Why would God put lies in His book?

There are four reasons.

One, exposure. A lie is easiest to see when it stands beside the truth. Scripture sets the two side by side, and then it lets the consequences speak.

Two, warning. The patterns of deception repeat in every generation. Doubt about what God has said. Self-serving theology. False claims to speak for God. Accusations against the righteous. We meet all four today, inside the church as well as outside it.

Three, realism. The Bible does not sanitize history. It shows how people, and Satan, actually talk, argue, accuse, and rationalize. A Bible with the lies removed would be a less honest book.

Four—and this is the point most worth carrying forward—discernment. Scripture trains us to ask, every time we read, who is speaking. What is spoken in the Bible is not automatically spoken by the Bible.

In fairness

In fairness, not every hard saying in Scripture is a lie. Job’s three friends are the clearest case. Much of what they say sounds pious, and some of it is true. In fact, Paul quotes Eliphaz with approval (1 Corinthians 3:19; Job 5:13).

Their error is in the application. They insisted that Job suffered because he had sinned, and they held on to it through three rounds of speeches. God’s verdict at the end is plain: “you have not spoken of Me what is right as My servant Job has” (Job 42:7).

Other passages speak from a limited human vantage point, which later revelation clarifies. Thus, the word lie should be kept for statements that contradict reality or God’s revealed word. Usually the speaker means to deceive. Sometimes he simply speaks with reckless confidence.

The God who cannot lie

On one point, the Bible is emphatic: God Himself does not lie (Numbers 23:19; Hebrews 6:18).

Paul calls Him ὁ ἀψευδὴς θεός, ho apseudēs theos, the God “who cannot lie” (Titus 1:2). Look closely at that adjective.

Apseudēs is the ordinary Greek word for “false,” with one letter in front of it. The letter is ἀ, a-, and it means “not.”

The serpent put a “not” in front of God’s word. That made a lie. Paul puts a “not” in front of falsehood. That describes God.

Jesus prayed to the Father, “Your word is truth” (John 17:17), and Paul told Timothy that all Scripture is God-breathed (2 Timothy 3:16).

The recorded lies do not weaken that claim. In fact, they are part of how the claim is carried out. A truthful God gives us a truthful account of a lying world, and then He judges every lie against His truth.