falsehood

Distinctions

sheker (שקר)

The Torah's own word: midvar sheker tirchak (Shemos 23:7), and lo teshakru in the prohibition of Vayikra 19:11. Rabbi Yosef Albo (Sefer HaIkkarim 2:27) works from emes, truth, as the antonym of both sheker and kazav: truth requires agreement between the statement and reality, and between the mouth and the heart. Sheker is the break in the first, a statement out of joint with the way things are. Rabbi Yehuda Leib Edel presses him: if sheker is any objective untruth, how can the Torah forbid testifying sheker or swearing sheker (Vayikra 19:11-12), given that a man can present things only as he perceives them, and given that Shevuos 26a exempts one who swore falsely while thinking that what he said was true? To Rabbi Edel this suggests sheker must carry an element of advertent deceit. Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg reaches the same place from the wording: the Torah writes lo teshakru and not lo sechazvu, which shows the prohibition covers deliberate lying and not mistaken lying (on his reading kazav is the mistaken lie, and sheker the purposeful or deceptive one). The column does not let Rabbi Albo fall, though: we may defend him, it says, by holding that the general definition of sheker does cover any objective untruth, inadvertent or wanton, and that the Gemara is applying a separate scriptural imperative, derived from Vayikra 5:4, which limits the prohibition of false testimony and false oaths to one who perjures knowingly. On that defense Albo's broad sheker stands. Rav Hirsch (to Bereishis 9:21, 21:23, 43:11), taking kuf and kaf as interchangeable, joins sheker to shikur, a drunkard: as the drunk's imagination throws up what has no place in reality, sheker is what stands outside the real.

kazav (כזב)

Scripture uses it plainly for falsehood: "the remnant of Israel do no iniquity and speak no kazav" (Tzefaniah 3:13). Albo: kazav is the break in the second equation, the mouth saying what the heart does not hold. The Vilna Gaon (to Mishlei 12:25) draws the line by time instead: sheker was a lie the whole time, kazav became a lie afterward. A man who says he will do what he never intended has spoken sheker; a man who meant it and then failed to keep his word has spoken kazav. Rabbeinu Yosef Bechor Shor (to Bamidbar 23:19) likewise reads kozev as one who does not keep his word. Rabbi Yehuda Leib Shapira-Frankfurter draws the consequence: the Torah never forbade saying kazav, because at the moment of speech there is no kazav yet; it becomes one retroactively. Malbim (Yair Ohr): sheker has no validity at all, while kazav has some purchase on reality, seeming true at first and only later fully exposed. In Sefer HaCarmel he adds that one utterance can be both at once: sheker from the speaker's side, who knew, and kazav from the hearer's side, who cannot yet disprove it. That is what the phrase sheker v'chazav holds together. Rav Hirsch (to Shemos 7:11, 21:17) links the root כ-ז-ב to כ-ש-ף, witchcraft: what looks real on the surface and proves wholly untrue, and Yechezkel indeed uses kazav of witchery (13:6, 13:7, 13:9, 21:34, 22:28).

kachash (כחש)

Usually rendered "denial," and forbidden in the same pasuk as sheker (Vayikra 19:11). Malbim (Sefer HaCarmel): a sheker meets no immediate contradiction when it is spoken, while a kachash is contradicted before it is uttered, said into the teeth of the other party's claim. Rav Hirsch (to Vayikra 5:21, 19:11, Devarim 9:7) makes it a false reaction to another's claim, and contrasts it with ka'as, anger (taking ches with ayin and shin with samech as interchangeable): ka'as is a real and warranted response to another's wrongdoing, kachash a manufactured response of denial to another's warranted claim. Rabbi Yonah Wilheimer sets kazav against kachash as the two shapes a lie can take: kazav says of what is not that it is (fabrication), kachash says of what is that it is not (denial). It would seem, the column adds, that on his reading sheker is then an umbrella term over both.

Rabbi Shlomo Aharon Wertheimer seems to grade all three by how soon the lie can be caught: sheker, everyone knows it is false the moment it leaves the mouth; kachash, plausible but not refutable outright; kazav, any lie whose falsity can be discovered only later.

Rendering guidance

• Sheker: falsehood in a pasuk (midvar sheker tirchak, "keep far from a false matter"), a lie in plain prose. Never "a mistake."
• Kazav: a lie, and where the passage turns on the Gra's or Malbim's distinction, a lie that time exposes or a broken word. In Yechezkel's prophecies against the false prophets, falsehood with the divination sense noted.
• Kachash: denial, or denying. Reserve "deceit" for sheker.
• Trap: English "lie" will absorb all three. The confession al cheit shechatanu lefanecha b'kachash uvchazav must not read "through lies and lies"; render "through denial and through falsehood."
• Second trap: sheker v'chazav is a real pair, not a doublet for emphasis. Malbim's reading gives you the two vantage points, so render it "false and deceptive" rather than collapsing it.
• Where Albo's frame is in play, sheker is out of joint with reality and kazav is out of joint with the heart; keep the two mismatches visible.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Mishpatim: Feeding the Lie," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 1 Adar 5781 (2021-02-13): https://articles.ohr.edu/articles/mishpatim-feeding-the-lie, raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/9080-mishpatim-feeding-the-lie.md. Primary loci cited: Shemos 23:7; Vayikra 19:11-12; Vayikra 5:4 and 5:21; Tzefaniah 3:13; Shevuos 26a; Sefer HaIkkarim 2:27; Rav Hirsch to Bereishis 9:21, 21:23, 43:11, Shemos 7:11, 21:17, Vayikra 5:21, 19:11, Devarim 9:7; the Vilna Gaon to Mishlei 12:25; Rabbeinu Yosef Bechor Shor to Bamidbar 23:19; Malbim, Yair Ohr and Sefer HaCarmel; Yechezkel 13:6, 13:7, 13:9, 21:34, 22:28.