Name Keeping

You shall not take the name Yahweh your God in vain Exodus 20:7

In Vain – We practice commandment reduction. We assign the context of the commandment to circumstances as narrow as possible in order that we can claim to meet the requirement without having to deal with its real impact. We do it all the time. Don’t steal. Yes, of course. But that can’t include a few indiscretions with taxes. After all, that’s not stealing. It’s really my money. And it can’t include those extra minutes I took at lunch or the phone call to my friend when I was at work. Who counts time in the stealing equation? You get the picture. Narrow, narrow, narrow. “All these I have kept from my youth,” said the wealthy, young ruler to Jesus. Narrowly defined, you and I might have been able to say the same.

So when we come to this commandment, we can all claim observance. We don’t swear. Case closed. Until we look at the Hebrew word translated “in vain”.

Lashawh is a word that means “emptiness, uselessness, deception and without result”. It primary meaning is deceit or lie. It has almost nothing to do with our contemporary restriction about swearing. What God says is this: do no invoke My name in anything associated with deceit, lies or empty words (without purpose). Walter Kaiser comments that this commandment requires “all of our words be confirmed by the power(s) about and outside ourselves – as if our word in itself were not sufficient.”

Ah, now we see the context. It’s about authority. My word is spoken under the authority of God’s word. Whenever and wherever I speak apart from His confirmation, I break this commandment. I have no authority to speak for myself. I am not the Master. I am the slave. My speech must first be rooted in God’s thought, word and deed. Then, and only then, will I have something to say.

Do you take God’s name in vain? Every time you open your mouth and speak from your own authority you are speaking useless and empty words. If you do this while claiming to be His child, you are dragging His name through the mud. Unless He gives you the words, they are not His. And what is not His is not to be spoken.

If we understood this commandment, the world would be a much quieter place (see Habakkuk 2:20).