Vowing in the Name of God

Now God says when you take an oath, when you make your vows, you better not ever take the name of the Lord your God in vain. “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, so help you . . . the altar?” Is that what we say? “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you . . . the hairs on your head?” It’s, “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?” When we take a vow to speak the truth in the bearing of solemn witness and testimony in a legal courtroom, we swear not by the earth, for it is the Lord’s footstool, not by the altar, but by God Himself.

Why? Our fathers understood that a sacred vow uttered in the name of God is not only a human promise of great seriousness, but it is an act of worship. How’s that? The Jew understood that, that it is an act of worship. Because whenever we come together and we make promises to one another in the name of God, we are recognizing, first of all, God’s authority over us when we make the promise. And also implied in that is the omnipresence of God. Not just His sovereignty, but the acknowledgement that wherever Laban goes and wherever Jacob goes, there’s nowhere that they can escape the eye of the Almighty, who monitors the terms of those promises. Marriage vows are broken every night in secret, but there’s nowhere you can go to escape the eye of God who watches the keeping of your vows. If you don’t take your vows seriously, He does.