It seems significant that those called upon to testify in the courts of the land must declare either by oath or affirmation that what they are about to say is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

The truth and the whole truth are sometimes different. Too often it is assumed that the truth has been told if someone simply says the right words. Too often it is assumed that a person has told the truth when actually he has told a half-truth and withheld the other half. This is the reason for stipulating the whole truth. A half truth is often as misleading as an out and out lie and if it is told in an effort to mislead, isn’t it just as wicked?

Men often mislead by the inflection of the voice – by insinuation and innuendo, by gesture, by what they suggest rather than what they say and by what they leave unsaid.

There are those Isaiah condemns who ”make a man an offender for a word.” These resort to slick, legal loopholes, who rely on the letter of the law and ignore every intention of honor and honesty.

If we deceive our brother are we any the less guilty because we technically told the truth while misleading him?

The whole intent of man, what he means to say and what he means not to say, what he means to do and what he means not to do, and what he thinks in his heart, are all involved in telling the truth and we shall be held accountable to the judge of all the earth if we have not told the truth – the whole truth.

We recall the difficulties Abraham got into because he told Pharaoh and Abimelech that Sarah was his sister. Now Abraham had told the truth because she was his father’s daughter but not his mother’s daughter. Since she was his half-sister he had not lied but he certainly had not told the whole truth for she was not only his sister but also his wife. This, Abraham had concealed, and as a result we read that ”the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s house.” God plagued Pharaoh and warned Abimelech in a dream that Sarah was Abraham’s wife and we can see from this the difficulties that can arise when the truth is told but not the whole truth.

Sarah had been chosen by God to be the mother of the Jewish nation and as a consequence she was delivered out of the hands of her would be suitors. We can not rely upon God to save us when we have told only half of the truth and thereby mislead another.

We must not rely on tricky technicalities or legal loopholes or ambiguous utterances that are a mere mask for falsehood.

Let us in all our dealings make sure that we are scrupulously honest by telling the whole truth.