35 Bible Verses about Lawsuits

“You must not deny justice to a poor person among you in his lawsuit.

Do not show favoritism to a poor person in his lawsuit.

“You must not act unjustly when deciding a case. Do not be partial to the poor or give preference to the rich; judge your neighbor fairly.

Do not show partiality when deciding a case; listen to small and great alike. Do not be intimidated by anyone, for judgment belongs to God. Bring me any case too difficult for you, and I will hear it.

Don’t rob a poor man because he is poor,
and don’t crush the oppressed at the gate,
for the Lord will take up their case
and will plunder those who plunder them.

“You must not spread a false report. Do not join the wicked to be a malicious witness. “You must not follow a crowd in wrongdoing. Do not testify in a lawsuit and go along with a crowd to pervert justice.

Do not give false testimony against your neighbor.

Do not give dishonest testimony against your neighbor.

“One witness cannot establish any wrongdoing or sin against a person, whatever that person has done. A fact must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses. “If a malicious witness testifies against someone accusing him of a crime, the two people in the dispute must stand in the presence of the Lord before the priests and judges in authority at that time. read more.
The judges are to make a careful investigation, and if the witness turns out to be a liar who has falsely accused his brother, you must do to him as he intended to do to his brother. You must purge the evil from you. Then everyone else will hear and be afraid, and they will never again do anything evil like this among you. You must not show pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, and foot for foot.

These are the things you must do: Speak truth to one another; make true and sound decisions within your gates.

“If a case is too difficult for you—concerning bloodshed, lawsuits, or assaults—cases disputed at your gates, you must go up to the place the Lord your God chooses. You are to go to the Levitical priests and to the judge who presides at that time. Ask, and they will give you a verdict in the case. You must abide by the verdict they give you at the place the Lord chooses. Be careful to do exactly as they instruct you. read more.
You must abide by the instruction they give you and the verdict they announce to you. Do not turn to the right or the left from the decision they declare to you. The person who acts arrogantly, refusing to listen either to the priest who stands there serving the Lord your God or to the judge, must die. You must purge the evil from Israel. Then all the people will hear about it, be afraid, and no longer behave arrogantly.

“So I took the leaders of your tribes, wise and respected men, and set them over you as leaders: officials for thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens, and officers for your tribes. I commanded your judges at that time: Hear the cases between your brothers, and judge rightly between a man and his brother or a foreign resident. Do not show partiality when deciding a case; listen to small and great alike. Do not be intimidated by anyone, for judgment belongs to God. Bring me any case too difficult for you, and I will hear it. read more.
At that time I commanded you about all the things you were to do.

“If there is a dispute between men, they are to go to court, and the judges will hear their case. They will clear the innocent and condemn the guilty.

Whenever they have a dispute, it comes to me, and I make a decision between one man and another. I teach them God’s statutes and laws.”

“When men get in a fight and hit a pregnant woman so that her children are born prematurely but there is no injury, the one who hit her must be fined as the woman’s husband demands from him, and he must pay according to judicial assessment.

For He is not a man like me, that I can answer Him,
that we can take each other to court.
There is no one to judge between us,
to lay his hand on both of us.
Let Him take His rod away from me
so His terror will no longer frighten me.
read more.
Then I would speak and not fear Him.
But that is not the case; I am on my own.

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for it is better for him to say to you, “Come up here!”
than to demote you in plain view of a noble. Don’t take a matter to court hastily.
Otherwise, what will you do afterward
if your opponent humiliates you?
Make your case with your opponent
without revealing another’s secret;
read more.
otherwise, the one who hears will disgrace you,
and you’ll never live it down.

If a wise man goes to court with a fool,
there will be ranting and raving but no resolution.

Reach a settlement quickly with your adversary while you’re on the way with him, or your adversary will hand you over to the judge, the judge to the officer, and you will be thrown into prison. I assure you: You will never get out of there until you have paid the last penny!

Listen, my dear brothers: Didn’t God choose the poor in this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom that He has promised to those who love Him? Yet you dishonored that poor man. Don’t the rich oppress you and drag you into the courts? Don’t they blaspheme the noble name that was pronounced over you at your baptism?

If any of you has a legal dispute against another, do you dare go to court before the unrighteous, and not before the saints? Or don’t you know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is judged by you, are you unworthy to judge the smallest cases? Don’t you know that we will judge angels—not to mention ordinary matters? read more.
So if you have cases pertaining to this life, do you select those who have no standing in the church to judge? I say this to your shame! Can it be that there is not one wise person among you who is able to arbitrate between his brothers? Instead, believer goes to court against believer, and that before unbelievers! Therefore, to have legal disputes against one another is already a moral failure for you. Why not rather put up with injustice? Why not rather be cheated? Instead, you act unjustly and cheat—and you do this to believers!

Hate evil and love good;
establish justice in the gate.
Perhaps the Lord, the God of Hosts, will be gracious
to the remnant of Joseph.

For the ruthless one will vanish,
the scorner will disappear,
and all those who lie in wait with evil intent
will be killed—
those who, with their speech,
accuse a person of wrongdoing,
who set a trap at the gate for the mediator,
and without cause deprive the righteous of justice.

They trample the heads of the poor
on the dust of the ground
and block the path of the needy.
A man and his father have sexual relations
with the same girl,
profaning My holy name.

Those who turn justice into wormwood
throw righteousness to the ground. The One who made the Pleiades and Orion,
who turns darkness into dawn
and darkens day into night,
who summons the waters of the sea
and pours them out over the face of the earth—
Yahweh is His name.
He brings destruction on the strong,
and it falls on the stronghold.read more.
They hate the one who convicts the guilty
at the city gate
and despise the one who speaks with integrity.
Therefore, because you trample on the poor
and exact a grain tax from him,
you will never live in the houses of cut stone
you have built;
you will never drink the wine
from the lush vineyards
you have planted.
For I know your crimes are many
and your sins innumerable.
They oppress the righteous, take a bribe,
and deprive the poor of justice at the gates.

They speak mere words,
taking false oaths while making covenants.
So lawsuits break out
like poisonous weeds in the furrows of a field.

After this, Absalom got himself a chariot, horses, and 50 men to run before him. He would get up early and stand beside the road leading to the city gate. Whenever anyone had a grievance to bring before the king for settlement, Absalom called out to him and asked, “What city are you from?” If he replied, “Your servant is from one of the tribes of Israel,” Absalom said to him, “Look, your claims are good and right, but the king does not have anyone to listen to you.” read more.
He added, “If only someone would appoint me judge in the land. Then anyone who had a grievance or dispute could come to me, and I would make sure he received justice.”

Joab son of Zeruiah observed that the king’s mind was on Absalom. So Joab sent someone to Tekoa to bring a clever woman from there. He told her, “Pretend to be in mourning: dress in mourning clothes and don’t put on any oil. Act like a woman who has been mourning for the dead for a long time. Go to the king and speak these words to him.” Then Joab told her exactly what to say. read more.
When the woman from Tekoa came to the king, she fell with her face to the ground in homage and said, “Help me, my king!” “What’s the matter?” the king asked her.

“To tell the truth, I am a widow; my husband died,” she said. “Your servant had two sons. They were fighting in the field with no one to separate them, and one struck the other and killed him. Now the whole clan has risen up against your servant and said, ‘Hand over the one who killed his brother so we may put him to death for the life of the brother he murdered. We will destroy the heir!’ They would extinguish my one remaining ember by not preserving my husband’s name or posterity on earth.” The king told the woman, “Go home. I will issue a command on your behalf.” Then the woman of Tekoa said to the king, “My lord the king, may any blame be on me and my father’s house, and may the king and his throne be innocent.” “Whoever speaks to you,” the king said, “bring him to me. He will not trouble you again!” She replied, “Please, may the king invoke the Lord your God, so that the avenger of blood will not increase the loss, and they will not eliminate my son!”

“As the Lord lives,” he vowed, “not a hair of your son will fall to the ground.” Then the woman said, “Please, may your servant speak a word to my lord the king?”

“Speak,” he replied. The woman asked, “Why have you devised something similar against the people of God? When the king spoke as he did about this matter, he has pronounced his own guilt. The king has not brought back his own banished one. We will certainly die and be like water poured out on the ground, which can’t be recovered. But God would not take away a life; He would devise plans so that the one banished from Him does not remain banished. “Now therefore, I’ve come to present this matter to my lord the king because the people have made me afraid. Your servant thought: I must speak to the king. Perhaps the king will grant his servant’s request. The king will surely listen in order to rescue his servant from the hand of this man who would eliminate both me and my son from God’s inheritance. Your servant thought: May the word of my lord the king bring relief, for my lord the king is able to discern the good and the bad like the Angel of God. May the Lord your God be with you.” Then the king answered the woman, “I’m going to ask you something; don’t conceal it from me!”

“Let my lord the king speak,” the woman replied. The king asked, “Did Joab put you up to all this?”

The woman answered. “As you live, my lord the king, no one can turn to the right or left from all my lord the king says. Yes, your servant Joab is the one who gave orders to me; he told your servant exactly what to say. Joab your servant has done this to address the issue indirectly, but my lord has wisdom like the wisdom of the Angel of God, knowing everything on earth.”

Then two women who were prostitutes came to the king and stood before him. One woman said, “Please my lord, this woman and I live in the same house, and I had a baby while she was in the house. On the third day after I gave birth, she also had a baby and we were alone. No one else was with us in the house; just the two of us were there. read more.
During the night this woman’s son died because she lay on him. She got up in the middle of the night and took my son from my side while your servant was asleep. She laid him at her breast, and she put her dead son in my arms. When I got up in the morning to nurse my son, I discovered he was dead. That morning, when I looked closely at him I realized that he was not the son I gave birth to.” “No,” the other woman said. “My son is the living one; your son is the dead one.”

The first woman said, “No, your son is the dead one; my son is the living one.” So they argued before the king. The king replied, “This woman says, ‘This is my son who is alive, and your son is dead,’ but that woman says, ‘No, your son is dead, and my son is alive.’” The king continued, “Bring me a sword.” So they brought the sword to the king. Solomon said, “Cut the living boy in two and give half to one and half to the other.” The woman whose son was alive spoke to the king because she felt great compassion for her son. “My lord, give her the living baby,” she said, “but please don’t have him killed!”

But the other one said, “He will not be mine or yours. Cut him in two!” The king responded, “Give the living baby to the first woman, and don’t kill him. She is his mother.”

As the king of Israel was passing by on the wall, a woman cried out to him, “My lord the king, help!” He answered, “If the Lord doesn’t help you, where can I get help for you? From the threshing floor or the winepress?” Then the king asked her, “What’s the matter?”

She said, “This woman said to me, ‘Give up your son, and we will eat him today. Then we will eat my son tomorrow.’ read more.
So we boiled my son and ate him, and I said to her the next day, ‘Give up your son, and we will eat him,’ but she has hidden her son.”

While Gallio was proconsul of Achaia, the Jews made a united attack against Paul and brought him to the judge’s bench. “This man,” they said, “persuades people to worship God contrary to the law!” As Paul was about to open his mouth, Gallio said to the Jews, “If it were a matter of a crime or of moral evil, it would be reasonable for me to put up with you Jews. read more.
But if these are questions about words, names, and your own law, see to it yourselves. I don’t want to be a judge of such things.” So he drove them from the judge’s bench.

However, when the city clerk had calmed the crowd down, he said, “Men of Ephesus! What man is there who doesn’t know that the city of the Ephesians is the temple guardian of the great Artemis, and of the image that fell from heaven? Therefore, since these things are undeniable, you must keep calm and not do anything rash. For you have brought these men here who are not temple robbers or blasphemers of our goddess. read more.
So if Demetrius and the craftsmen who are with him have a case against anyone, the courts are in session, and there are proconsuls. Let them bring charges against one another. But if you want something else, it must be decided in a legal assembly. In fact, we run a risk of being charged with rioting for what happened today, since there is no justification that we can give as a reason for this disorderly gathering.” After saying this, he dismissed the assembly.

Reach a settlement quickly with your adversary while you’re on the way with him, or your adversary will hand you over to the judge, the judge to the officer, and you will be thrown into prison.

Don’t take a matter to court hastily.
Otherwise, what will you do afterward
if your opponent humiliates you?

If any of you has a legal dispute against another, do you dare go to court before the unrighteous, and not before the saints?