18. A maul. The three types of weapons represent the effects of false witness upon the friend so vilified. The maul was a war club that crushed in the heads or smashed the bones and bruised the flesh of its victims. Some attacks made upon a man’s reputation are crude and simply crush the sufferer down in ruin. Others inflict deep cuts with sharp words which incapacitate and often destroy as does a sword. But one of the favorite weapons of the maligner of his fellow men is the arrow. Sped from a distance, it pierces the heart and saps the will to struggle against the covert enmity of the archer, who often disguises himself as a friend. Such attacks break the sixth commandment as well as the ninth (Ex. 20:13, 16; see PP 308).