“You shall not misuse the name of Yahweh your God, for Yahweh will not hold him guiltless who misuses his name.
Not to take the name of God in vain
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
לֹא תִשָּׂא אֶת־שֵׁם־יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ לַשָּׁוְא
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
שהזהירנו שלא לישבע שבועת שוא, והוא אמרו יתברך לא תשא את שם ה' אלהיך לשוא, והוא שישבע על מחוייב המציאות שהוא בחלוף מה שהוא בו נמצא או על דבר מהנמנעות שהם נמצאות או ישבע לבטל דבר מצוה, וכן אם נשבע על דבר ידוע לא יכחיש אותו ולא יחלוק עליו שום חולק כגון שנשבע בה' שכל מי שישחט ימות זה נשא גם כן שם ה' לשוא (*בירושלמי שבועות פ"ג). ולשון משנה (שבועות כ"ט) איזוהי שבועת שוא נשבע לשנות את הידוע. והעובר על לאו זה במזיד לוקה בשוגג פטור כשאר חייב לאוין כמו שבארתי, ושם אמרו (שם) בשבועות זו היא שבועת שוא שחייבין על זדונה מלקות ועל שגגתה פטור. ושם התבארו משפטי מצוה זו. (וישמע יתרו, שם):
That He prohibited us - that we not make a vain oath. And that is His, may He be blessed, saying, "You shall not take the name of the Lord in vain" (Exodus 20:7). And that is that one swears about something - the existence of which is axiomatic - that it is different than what it actually is, or about the existence of something impossible or [if] he swears to negate the matter of a commandment. And likewise if he swears about [the truth of] something known, that no one denies or disagrees about at all - for example, he swears by God that anything that is slaughtered, dies - this one has also taken the Lord's name in vain. (Yerushalmi Shevuot 3) And the language of the Mishnah (Shevuot 29a) is, "Which is a vain oath? One who swears to change that which is known." And one who transgresses this negative commandment is lashed if he was volitional, and exempted if he was inadvertent - like the other ones guilty of [violation of] a negative commandment, as we explained. And there, they said in Shevuot (Shevuot 29a), "This is the vain oath on an utterance for which one is liable for lashes, when volitional; and exempted when inadvertent." And the regulations of this commandment are explained there. (See Parashat Yitro; Mishneh Torah, Oaths 1.)
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
- Lashes (malkot)
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
- Conservative Binding
- Reform Kept as an ethical principle
- Reconstructionist Kept as an ethical principle
- 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 read it more strictly
Rabbinic aggadah
- Pesiqta Rabbati 22 expanded it homiletically
- Tanḥuma, Yitro expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Decalogo 82-95 read it spiritually
- De Specialibus Legibus 2.2-17 The catalog describes this reception as: expounded
Josephus
- Ant. 3.91 affirmed it
The New Testament
- Matthew 5:33-37 read it more strictly Sermon on the Mount extends oath-restraint to a prohibition of swearing altogether
- James 5:12 read it more strictly echoes Matthean ban on oaths
The Church Fathers
- Augustine, Sermon 180 read it more strictly
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 2:224 carried a parallel
- Q 5:89 carried a parallel
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 invocation of divine names as oath-guarantors and curse-bearers, with sanctions for violating the sworn name Relationship to the parallel: shared formulary curse section, ll. 414-493 (with divine-witness invocation), per SAA 2 no. 6 Parpola & Watanabe, SAA 2 (1988)
- neo assyrian vassal treaties divine names invoked as oath-guarantors and curse-bearers; violation of the sworn name triggers divine punishment — the same logic as the Third Commandment's warning that YHWH will not hold guiltless those who misuse his name Relationship to the parallel: shared formulary curse section (lines 414-493), divine witness invocations Parpola and Watanabe, Neo-Assyrian Treaties and Loyalty Oaths (SAA 2, 1988)
- code of hammurabi penalties for false testimony in a capital case; relevant chiefly to the oath/false-witness complex rather than directly to vain use of the divine name Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§3-4 Roth, Law Collections 2nd ed. (1997)
- code of hammurabi capital penalties for false testimony in a capital case where a god's name was invoked as oath-guarantor, providing the ANE legal backdrop for the Decalogue's severe warning against misusing the divine name Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§3-4 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (Scholars Press, 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.
-
general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
The sanction of thirty-nine lashes (malkot) for a vain or empty oath — including swearing to fulfill a commandment one is already obligated to perform, or swearing about an obvious impossibility — applies corporal punishment to a non-violent speech act, in direct conflict with the modern penal principle that punishment must be proportionate to the harm caused.
-
general principle
This framework classifies the relation as an incompatible method.
Modern penal codes do not criminalize the 'vain' or empty invocation of a deity's name; where misuse of a divine name is addressed (e.g., residual blasphemy laws), the prescribed method of lashes is categorically incompatible with post-Enlightenment prohibitions on corporal punishment.
-
general principle
This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.
As with all malkot sanctions, rabbinic tradition holds that the jurisdiction of ordained courts (Sanhedrin) to impose lashes lapsed after the destruction of the Second Temple; the de jure norm persists in halakhic codes but is not enforced by any functioning Jewish court.