Oath

An oath in scripture is a solemn appeal to a higher power — usually Yahweh himself — that binds the speaker's word with the threat of divine sanction if it fails. Oaths run from the patriarchal narratives, where they seal covenants between strangers and obligate sons to bury their fathers, through the Mosaic regulation that confines them to truthful witness and forbids profanation of the divine name, into prophetic and wisdom literature that warns against habitual swearing, and out into the apostolic writings, where Yahweh's own oath to Abraham becomes the immovable foundation of Christian hope.

Patriarchal Oaths

The earliest oaths in Genesis are sealed between heads of households. Abram, refusing the spoils of Sodom, has already lifted his hand to Yahweh: "I have lifted up my hand to Yahweh, God Most High, possessor [by his Speech] of heaven and earth, that I will not take a thread nor a sandal strap nor anything that is yours" (Gen 14:22-23). At Beersheba Abimelech presses Abraham, "Now therefore swear to me here [by the Speech of] God that you will not deal falsely with me, nor with my son, nor with my son's son" — and Abraham answers, "I will swear" (Gen 21:23-24). The same household oath is renewed by the next generation when Isaac and Abimelech "swore one to another" and parted in peace (Gen 26:31).

Two of the most distinctive patriarchal oaths use the hand-under-thigh gesture. Abraham binds his senior slave to find a wife for Isaac among his own kindred: "Put, I pray you, your hand under my thigh. And I will make you swear [by the Speech of] Yahweh, the God of heaven and the God of the earth" (Gen 24:2-3); the slave duly puts his hand under his master's thigh "and swore to him concerning this matter" (Gen 24:9). Years later Jacob extracts the same gesture from Joseph that he be buried with his fathers: "And he said, Swear to me: and he swore to him. And Israel bowed himself on the head of the bed" (Gen 47:31). Joseph in turn binds his own brothers, "God will surely visit you⁺, and you⁺ will carry up my bones from here" (Gen 50:25). Even rash bargains are framed by oath, as when Esau swore away his birthright (Gen 25:33), and Jacob, parting from Laban, "swore by the Fear of his father Isaac" (Gen 31:53).

Legal Regulation under Moses

The Mosaic legislation does not abolish oaths but disciplines them. The third commandment forbids using Yahweh's name for an empty word: "You will not take the name of Yahweh your God in vain; for Yahweh will not hold innocent anyone who takes his name in vain" (Ex 20:7). Deuteronomy presses the positive form: "You will fear Yahweh your God; and him you will serve, and will swear by his name" (Deut 6:13). False swearing is treated as profanation: "And you⁺ will not swear by my name falsely, and [thus] you profane the name of your God: I am Yahweh" (Lev 19:12).

Several passages set up the judicial oath. In a property dispute where no witness can be produced, "the oath of Yahweh will be between them both" (Ex 22:11). The trespass law of Leviticus extends this to false swearing in business: a man who has sworn to a lie about a deposit, a bargain, or a robbery must restore the goods in full and add a fifth, in addition to bringing a guilt offering (Lev 6:2-5). The ordeal of bitter water for a wife suspected of unfaithfulness is itself a sworn oath administered by the priest: "And the priest will cause her to swear, and will say to the woman, If no man has plowed you ... [then] be innocent from this water of bitterness that causes the curse" (Num 5:19). The vow-and-oath statute of Numbers binds the swearer absolutely: "When a man vows a vow to Yahweh, or swears an oath to bind his soul with a bond, he will not break his word" (Num 30:2). Solomon's temple-dedication prayer assumes that judicial oaths will be sworn at the altar — "If a man sins against his fellow man, and he is subjected to an oath to cause him to swear, and he comes [and] swears before your altar in this house" (1 Kings 8:31).

Oaths Sworn by Yahweh

The most weighty oaths in scripture are those Yahweh swears himself. To Abraham at the Aqedah: "[By my Speech] I have sworn, says Yahweh, because you have done this thing, and haven't withheld your son, your only son" (Gen 22:16). To David: "Once I have sworn by my holiness: I will not lie to David" (Ps 89:35). Against the wilderness generation: "Therefore I swore in my wrath, That they should not enter into my rest" (Ps 95:11). The same divine oath is reasserted in Isaiah — "Yahweh of hosts has sworn, saying, Surely, as I have thought, so it will come to pass" (Isa 14:24); "Yahweh has sworn by his right hand, and by the arm of his strength, Surely I will no more give your grain to be food for your enemies" (Isa 62:8). Jeremiah holds out the same promise to the nations: if they will learn to "swear by my name, As Yahweh lives ... then they will be built up in the midst of my people" (Jer 12:16). Sirach gathers the Abrahamic oath into wisdom form: "Wherefore, with an oath he swore to him, To bless nations in his seed" (Sir 44:21).

Judicial and National Oaths

Oaths sealed political covenants and oaths of allegiance throughout the monarchy. Joshua and the princes of Israel swore peace with the Hivites and afterwards refused to break it: "We have sworn to them by [the Speech of] Yahweh, the God of Israel: now therefore we may not touch them" (Josh 9:15, 9:19). Rahab's clan was preserved by an oath of mutual loyalty: "swear to me by [the Speech of] Yahweh ... that you⁺ also will deal kindly with my father's house" (Josh 2:12-14). Jehoiada bound the captains of the guard by an oath in Yahweh's house before showing them the rightful king (2 Kings 11:4). Ecclesiastes presses obedience on this account: "Keep the king's command, and that in regard of the oath of God" (Eccl 8:2). Ezekiel pictures the political oath at its most solemn: Nebuchadnezzar "took of the royal seed, and made a covenant with him; he also brought him under an oath" (Ezek 17:13). When Zedekiah broke that oath, the Chronicler is blunt: "he also rebelled against King Nebuchadnezzar, who had made him swear by God: but he stiffened his neck" (2 Chr 36:13). Even Zedekiah's private oath to Jeremiah — "As Yahweh lives, that made us this soul, I will not put you to death" (Jer 38:16) — uses the standard royal formula.

The Maccabean record preserves the dark side of this practice. The king's oath to the besieged was given and broken in successive verses (1 Macc 6:61-62), and Bacchides swore peace to a body of scribes only to slay sixty in a single day, so that the survivors said: "There is no truth, nor justice among them: for they have broken the covenant, and the oath which they made" (1 Macc 7:15-18). Nicanor's rash oath against Judas is in the same vein (1 Macc 7:35), as is the more honorable oath of safe conduct in 1 Macc 9:71.

False and Profane Oaths

Scripture takes a hard line against the rash, the lying, and the habitual oath. Esau's oath that surrendered the birthright is held up as a warning (Gen 25:33). Joshua's princes were trapped by an oath sworn before the case was examined (Josh 9:19). Herod, in the Markan account, swore to a dancing girl, "Whatever you will ask of me, I will give it you, to the half of my kingdom" — and so was bound to behead John (Mark 6:23). Peter's third denial in Mark passes from speech into sworn speech: "But he began to curse, and to swear, I don't know this man of whom you⁺ speak" (Mark 14:71).

Sirach is the sustained sapiential warning. "Do not accustom your mouth to an oath, And do not make a habit of naming the Holy One" (Sir 23:9); the man who swears continually "Is not cleansed from sin" (Sir 23:10), and "A man of many oaths is filled with iniquity, And the scourge does not depart from his house" (Sir 23:11). Of impious swearing it says, "The oath of the godless makes the hair stand on end, And their strife [makes] a man plug his ears" (Sir 27:14). And in the catalogue of things to be ashamed of, Ben Sira lists "altering an oath or a covenant" (Sir 41:19).

New Testament Teaching

In the apostolic writings the oath has not been abolished, but it has been narrowed. James gives the sharpest formulation: "But above all things, my brothers, don't swear, neither by the heaven, nor by the earth, nor by any other oath: but let your⁺ yes be yes, and your⁺ no, no; that you⁺ may not fall under judgment" (Jas 5:12). At the same time Paul still calls God to witness when his integrity is at stake: "But I call God for a witness on my soul, that to spare you⁺ I forbare to come to Corinth" (2 Cor 1:23).

Hebrews on God's Oath

Hebrews makes the divine oath the architecture of Christian hope. "For when God made a promise to Abraham, since he could swear by none greater, he swore by himself, saying, Surely blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply you" (Heb 6:13-14). The argument generalizes: "For men swear by the greater: and in every dispute of theirs the oath is final for confirmation. In which God, being minded to show more abundantly to the heirs of the promise the immutability of his counsel, interposed with an oath" (Heb 6:16-17). Two immutable things — the promise and the oath that confirmed it — give "a strong encouragement, who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us" (Heb 6:18).

The same argument is then pressed onto the priesthood. Levitical priests "have been made priests without an oath; but he with an oath by him who says of him, The Lord swore and will not repent, You are a priest forever"; "by so much also has Jesus become the surety of a better covenant" (Heb 7:20-22). The oath that was once a hedge against false witness in Israelite courts has become, in Hebrews, the divine guarantee behind the covenant itself. The two earlier divine oaths — "As I swore in my wrath, They will not enter into my rest" (Heb 3:11) and the Abrahamic promise of Heb 6:17 — stand together as the hinge of the argument: God's sworn word excludes the unbelieving from rest and welcomes the trusting into it.