Priorites - God
Jesus drew his answer from the most memorized and recited passage in all the Jewish Scriptures: Hear, O Israel! The LORD our God the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” (Deut. 6:4–5).
Jesus quoted the Septuagint almost verbatim, but he substituted mind (dianoia) for the similar sounding “might” (dunameos). We are to take this list as an emphatic way of saying, “Love God with everything you are in every way possible.” But it was not without significance that our Lord deliberately substituted “mind” here rather than some other term. Christians need to take a lesson from this. We should learn to think critically and biblically.
The primary meaning of “misuse the name of the LORD” (nāśāh šēm yahweh, lit., “raise up Yahweh’s name for no good”) would appear to be invoking his name as guarantor of one’s words. Examples would include promising someone something “by Yahweh,” meaning: “I guarantee you that my promise is true, or Yahweh may kill me or otherwise punish me if I don’t keep my promise,” or giving legal testimony with the meaning of “I swear that my testimony in this legal matter/before this court is true with the guarantee that Yahweh may kill me or otherwise punish me if it isn’t.” In other words, the most basic, core idea behind this commandment is the prohibition of perjury.39 We must remember, however, that the commandment is worded generally enough to encompass any misuse of Yahweh’s name—from making light of it or overtly mocking it, to speaking about Yahweh in any way disrespectfully, to using it as the theophoric element42 in a personal name under social pressure to have one’s family “look orthodox” when in fact their beliefs were pagan/idolatrous.
Yahweh’s name signified his essence. In any culture, modern or ancient, a name is a verbal symbol for a person or thing, and the ancients in particular obviously appreciated the way names connoted the very value, character, and influence of a person or thing. To speak Yahweh’s name was to recognize his awesome power and holiness and even to invite his response to one’s particular situation at the moment. Those who had not obeyed Yahweh might well fear even to mention his name out loud lest he respond by appearing in some fashion among them. Thus Amos 6:10 describes those wishing no contact with Yahweh’s judgment against them as saying, “Hush! We must not mention the name of the LORD.” Jesus reinforced and clarified this commandment with regard to making false promises (swearing falsely/uttering false oaths) that invoked God’s name by banning the practice of invoking anything as a guarantor of honesty altogether, including any substitution for the divine name in an oath (Matt 5:33–37; 23:16–22; cf. Jas 5:12), thus virtually eliminating any kind of oathtaking and requiring one’s word to be one’s bond in any promise.