A kindness

 Feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken -

I don't think in Leviticus and Deuteronomy there is a single unilateral command against lying / dishonesty. He uses a lot of illustrations / examples of dishonesty but He doesn't ever outright say "Don't lie!". He says a lot of other things, some of them are a bit difficult to read. There's a chunk of text that explicitly lists a bunch of sexual sins to be avoided. But he seems a bit uneasy telling the people that lying is all around abhorrent.

 Now, later on, in Proverbs and the different bits of text where God is declaring judgement, He speaks vehemently about the evil of lying.

I personally think God didn't tell Israel "don't lie", because the people of Israel, at that point in time, were not known for being blatantly dishonest. Telling someone not to do something comes from the knowledge or the assumption at least that you think they're prone to that. And God does seem to have a degree of empathy for things like covetousness, since He gives the possibility of atonement for such sins, rather than the death penalty, and I think God was giving His laws in a respectful and compassionate manner, in line with His character, and one element of respect is to at the very least not undermine areas where a person is doing alright. He told them not to use false scales and pervert justice because those things are brought on by covetousness, not necessarily idolatry or unbelief. And as you can see later on in The Bible, those laws were so desperately needed yet ignored, which, of course, IS idolatry. Covetousness is feeling like you don't have enough. I think we've all been at the place where we don't have enough. We are commanded to be content with just enough, but that is not the life God ultimately wants for us. We are living here, on earth. The earth is cursed, because of our ancestor's sin, which we have been known, collectively, to unashamedly partake in. If we cannot accept this relatively light consequence of our sin, how can we even honestly say that we believe God is good, even in His judgements? There are people who are and will be in Hell for eternity. Let's not grumble about the fact we don't have everything we (think we) want. That will come later.

But anyway... just ruminating... maybe I'm totally off base on this... Idk.  Seems like I was going to add another paragraph but I can't think of what it might have been