You shall fear Yahweh your God. You shall serve him. You shall cling to him, and you shall swear by his name.
To swear by the name of God when taking an oath in truth
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
אֶת־יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ תִּירָא אֹתוֹ תַעֲבֹד וּבוֹ תִדְבָּק וּבִשְׁמוֹ תִּשָּׁבֵעַ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו להשבע בשמו כשנצטרך לקיים דבר מהדברים או להכחישו, כי בזה תהיה הגדולה והכבוד והעילוי. והוא אמרו יתברך ובשמו תשבע, ובבאור אמרו אמרה תורה השבע בשמו ואמרה תורה אל תשבע, רוצה לומר כמו שהשבועה אשר אין צורך אליה מזהיר ממנה והיא מצות לא תעשה כן השבועה בעת הצורך מצוה בה והיא מצות עשה. ולזה לא הותר להשבע בדבר מכל הנבראים כמו המלאכים והכוכבים אלא על צד חסרון המצרף כמו שישבע בשמש והוא ירצה לומר אדון השמש, ועל זה הצד תשבע אומתנו בשם משה רבינו מה נכבד שמו כאלו הנשבע נשבע באדון או במי ששלחו, וכל עת שלא יבוין הנשבע זה ונשבע באחד הנבראים להאמינו שיש לאותו הדבר אמתת עצם עד שישבע בו כבר עבר ושתף דבר אחר עם שם שמים אשר בא הפירוש (סוכה מ"ה:) כל המשתף שם שמים עם דבר אחר נעקר מן העולם. ולזה הענין כיון הכתוב בשמו תשבע, רוצה לומר שאליו בלבד תאמין האמת אשר ראוי לאדם להשבע בו. וכבר אמרו בתחלת תמורה (דף ג':) מנין שנשבעין לקיים המצות דכתיב ובשמו תשבע. (בפרשת עקב, הפלאה הלכות שבועות י"א):
That is that He commanded us to swear by His name when it is necessary to ratify something or to deny it. For there is aggrandizement, glory and exhalation through this. And that is His, may He be blessed, saying, "and by His name shall you swear" (Deuteronomy 10:20). And in the explanation, they said, "The Torah said, 'Swear,' and the Torah said, 'Do not swear' - meaning to say, just like it prohibits an oath for which there is no need, and it is a negative commandment; so too is there a commandment [to make] an oath when it is needed, and it is a positive commandment. And as a result, it is not permitted to swear by any of all the creatures, such as the angels or the stars, except by way of nullifying what is attached. This is like one who swears by the sun, but he means to say, the Master of the sun. And in this way, our nation swears by the name of our teacher, Moshe - how glorious is his name - as if the one swearing was swearing by the Master or by the One who sent him. But so long as the one who swears is not intending this, but is swearing by one of the creatures, to believe in it - that it has intrinsic truth, to the point that he swears by it - he has already transgressed and associated something else with the name of the Heavens. About this comes the explanation (Sukkah 45b), "Anyone who associates the name of the Heavens with something else is uprooted from the world." And this is matter that the verse, "and by His name shall you swear," intended - meaning that only about Him should you believe that there is truth by which it is appropriate to swear. And they already said at the beginning of Temurah (Temurah 3b), "From where [do we know] that we may swear to perform the commandments? As it is written, 'and by His name shall you swear.'" (See Parashat Ekev; Mishneh Torah, Oaths 11.)
Hebrew: Sefer HaMitzvot, Warsaw 1883 (public domain). English: Sefaria Edition, trans. Rabbi Francis Nataf, 2021 (CC0). Via Sefaria; translator’s footnotes omitted.
Literary form: a flat, unconditional command
Applicability
How the catalog describes where and when this commandment applies. These are independent descriptions, not a verdict on which laws still count.
- Recorded as practiced today
Classical halakhic consequences
The consequences the classical halakhah attaches to this commandment, grouped by who imposes them. Where a category has none recorded, that absence is itself meaningful.
Imposed by a court
No court-imposed penalty is recorded.
At the hands of Heaven
No divinely-imposed consequence is recorded.
Ritual remedy
No ritual remedy is recorded.
How the streams of Judaism treat this commandment
The streams of Judaism read the same commandment differently — an ongoing plurality, not a ranking. Each position below is reported as the catalog records it; none is presented as the correct one.
- Orthodox Binding, with modification
- Conservative Binding, with modification
- Reform Kept as an ethical principle
- Reconstructionist Not binding
- Karaite Binding
24 of 613 commandments have been examined in depth so far — this one is queued.
How later traditions received this commandment
How later traditions read or reworked this commandment, each attributed to its own voice. The catalog’s own classification of each reception is shown as it records it, never adopted as GEBible’s.
Qumran (the Dead Sea Scrolls)
- CD 15:1-5 The catalog describes this reception as: stringent reinterpretation (oath by Torah, not by the Name)
- 1QS 5:8-11 read it more strictly
Rabbinic aggadah
- Tanchuma Matot 1 expanded it homiletically
- Numbers Rabbah 22:1 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 2.2-38 rationalized it
- De Decalogo 84-95 The catalog describes this reception as: oath caution (restrictive)
Josephus
- War 2.135 The catalog describes this reception as: restrictive practice (descriptive)
The New Testament
- Matthew 5:33-37 treated it as abrogated Jesus tradition prohibits oath-taking entirely, radicalizing oath-caution
- James 5:12 treated it as abrogated echoes the Matthean prohibition
- Hebrews 6:16-17 reinterpreted it uses human oath-custom analogically to describe God's self-swearing; does not affirm the Deuteronomic oath as binding law
The Church Fathers
- Justin Martyr, First Apology 16 rejected it polemically
- John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Statues 8-9 rejected it polemically
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 2:224-225 carried a parallel, with divergence
- Q 5:89 carried a parallel, with divergence
Beside the older legal codes of its world
The commandment set beside the ancient Near-Eastern legal collections scholars compare it to — a descriptive comparison, not a claim of dependence.
- neo assyrian vassal treaties oath invoking divine witnesses as enforcers of loyalty Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast loyalty-oath and curse sections (adê body) Parpola & Watanabe, SAA II (1988)
- neo assyrian vassal treaties vassal loyalty oath sworn before divine witnesses; Deuteronomy's insistence that only YHWH's name be used in oaths repurposes the ANE multi-deity witness list by concentrating exclusive oath-authority in YHWH alone Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast stipulations and curse sections (adê body, lines 154-493) Parpola and Watanabe, Neo-Assyrian Treaties and Loyalty Oaths (SAA 2, 1988)
- code of hammurabi exculpatory and evidentiary oath sworn by the god in litigation Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§103, 106-107, 120, 126 (bailment/agency/property oath provisions); §§249, 266 (animal-custody oath provisions) Roth, Law Collections 2nd ed. (1997)
- laws of eshnunna Old Babylonian exculpatory oath in bailment litigation, sworn before the city-god at the temple gate, functionally parallel to CH §§103, 120, 126 Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§36-37 (deposit/bailment), with §37 specifying that the depositary swear an exculpatory oath "at the gate of (the god) Tishpak" if the bailed property is lost together with the householder's own Roth, Law Collections 2nd ed. (1997)
Where this commandment meets modern human-rights frameworks
One modern normative lens, attributed to it — not GEBible’s assessment. Each row names the framework it measures against and the catalog’s own classification of the relation.
This framework catalogues tensions; it records agreement in only one of its entries. The near-total tension rate is the shape of the instrument, not a finding.
No tension with the catalogued modern frameworks is recorded here.