Proverbs 14:5

New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

⁵A faithful witness does not lie,
but a false witness breathes out lies.^(A)

Proverbs 14:5

New English Translation

⁵A truthful witness^[a] does not lie,
but a false witness^[b] breathes out lies.^[c]

Proverbs 14:5 tn Heb “a witness of faithfulness.” The genitive functions in an attributive sense: “faithful witness” (so KJV, NRSV); TEV “reliable witness.”
Proverbs 14:5 tn Heb “a witness of falsehood.” The genitive functions in an attributive sense: “false witness.”
Proverbs 14:5 sn This saying addresses the problem of legal testimony: A faithful witness does not lie, but a false witness does lie—naturally. The first colon uses the verb כָּזַב (kazav, “to lie”) and the second colon uses the noun כָּזָב (kazav, “lie; falsehood”).

²⁵A truthful witness saves lives,
but one who utters lies is a betrayer.^(A)

²⁵A truthful witness^[a] rescues lives,^[b]
but one who testifies falsely betrays them.^[c]

Proverbs 14:25 tn Heb “a witness of truth”; cf. CEV “an honest witness.”
Proverbs 14:25 tn The noun נְפָשׁוֹת (n^efashot) often means “souls,” but here “lives”—it functions as a metonymy for life (BDB 659 s.v. נֶפֶשׁ 3.c).sn The setting of this proverb is the courtroom. One who tells the truth “saves” (מַצִּיל [matsil, “rescues; delivers”]) the lives of those falsely accused.
Proverbs 14:25 tc In the MT the verb lacks agreement with the two nouns in either gender or number so that there is no clear subject: “but he breathes lies, deceit.” Revocalizing the consonants from וְיָפִחַ (v^eyafiakh, “and he breathes/testifies”) to וִיפֵחַ (vifeakh, “and a witness [of lies]”) and from מִרְמָה (mirmah, “deceit”) to the Piel participle מְרַמֶּה (m^erammeh, “betrays, deceives, leads astray”) produces a grammatically acceptable text. One may also supply by parallelism “…betrays lives.”

New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition (NRSVUE)

New English Translation (NET)