The Deadly Sin of Bearing False Witness

The ninth commandment tells man not to give false witness.(Exodus 20:16) Nathaniel Hawthorn and Charles Dickens in their novels The Scarlet Letter and A Tale of Two Cities, respectively, both use punishment for deception as a recurring theme. Although they do so to different degrees and in dissimilar manners, both authors agree that deception is a sin that requires punishment.
In The Scarlet Letter, the heroine, Hester Prynne conceived a child out of wedlock. Despite the pleas and demands of the clerical community, she did not reveal the identity of the father. …