“If anyone sins in that he hears a public adjuration to testify, and though he is a witness, whether he has seen or come to know the matter, yet does not speak, he shall bear his iniquity;
1. And if a soul sin. The three kinds of offense, to which Moses refers in the beginning of the chapter, seem to differ much from each other; for the first, when a person concealed a matter which he knew, could not arise from error, yet I include this concealment of which he treats under the head of error, by supposing it to have been...
I. The offences here supposed are, 1. A man's concealing the truth when he was sworn as a witness to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Judges among the Jews had power to adjure not only the witnesses, as with us, but the person suspected (contrary to a rule of our law, that no man is bound to accuse himself)...
Commenting on Leviticus 5:1-6
And if a soul sin,.... The soul is put for the person, and is particularly mentioned, as Ben Melech says, because possessed of will and desire: and hear the voice of swearing; or cursing, or adjuration; not of profane swearing, and taking the name of God in vain, but either of false swearing, or perjury, as when a man hears another swear to a thing...