Oaths, and What God Thinks of Them

This is a small excerpt from the upcoming book (DV), The Oaths of God: An Introduction to Biblical Covenantalism. The last section is taken from The Words of the Covenant, Vol. 1.

God expects men to perform their oaths (Num. 30:2).  But He also advises refraining from them (Jam. 5:12).  Since men cannot know what the future holds, he ought not to swear oaths (cf. Judg. 11:30-31; Eccles. 5:5).  Jesus wants His followers not to swear oaths but to simply mean what they say (Matt. 5:36).  James agrees (Jam. 5:12). 

If oaths can be “transformed” by circumstances outside of them then oaths need not mean what they say.  Their original wording can be invested with meaning never envisaged by those who made them and agreed to them.   

When it comes to God, we witness Him reminding Isaac to live in the land because He swore to give it to Abraham (Gen. 26:3).  Joseph, at the end of his life, understood and trusted in this (Gen. 50:24. cf. Exod. 6:8; 13:11; 33:1; Num. 14:16, 23; Deut. 1:8; 6:10; 30:20; Jer. 32:22; Ezek. 16:8; Lk. 1:73).  This repetition of the land oath forms the basis for faith in Yahweh Himself. 

An oath from God is from the character of God and is an eternal mirror of His nature.  Thus, the author of Hebrews writes,

For when God made a promise to Abraham, because He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself – Hebrews 6:13.

God’s oath, which lay in the center of the Abrahamic covenant, specified certain things.  So the inspired writer concludes, “he obtained the promise” (Heb. 6:15b).  This “obtaining” of what is sworn by God is the core component of the ground of faith.  God will do what He has sworn to do (Num. 23:19).  It is our business to believe it.  It is certainly none of our business to change it to match our expectations.  Indeed, our expectations must be extracted from the words God has used, and never from reinterpretations of those words.  We see a sobering example of this in John 21:20-23. 

That these covenant oaths mean exactly what they say and do not alter with the passage of hundreds of years is proved by texts like Psalms 105:9-11/1 Chron. 16:15-18 (Abrahamic) and Psalms 106:28-31 (Priestly), and in Ezekiel 37:21-28 (Davidic, Abrahamic, Priestly, New) and Jeremiah 33:14-26 (New, Davidic, Priestly, Abrahamic).

Along with all this we find language where Yahweh stresses His commitment to His covenants (Gen. 6:18; Exod. 6:4; .  It is crucial to notice how God says He has “given” the land He specifies to Abraham’s descendants right after He passes through the animals (Gen. 15:17-21). 

When Scripture records Yahweh “remembering” His covenant (e.g., Exod. 2:24), it refers to Him acting upon the words of His oath (cf. Lev. 26:40-42).  There is every indication that God will do precisely what He has promised to do.   

The upshot of all this data is that the oaths of God are sacrosanct and hermeneutically obdurate and are never open to meanings which are alien to the terms of the oath.  This in turn means that God’s oaths mean exactly what they say, and are therefore the unchanging signposts guiding us to the correct storyline of the Scriptures.   

 What Yahweh Thinks of Covenant-Breakers

Having just uttered what is undoubtedly one of the most unambiguous promises in literature, and coming on the back of an entire extended portion on the subject of Israel’s eschatological hope (Jer. 30 – 33), Jeremiah switches gear to relate an incident under the quickly ebbing reign of king Zedekiah.

The background to the story is the desperation of the king and his nobles over the engagement with the overwhelming forces of Nebuchadnezzar, and what was sure to follow (Jer. 34:1f.).  In a last ditch effort to stave off the inevitable, the king and his courtiers turn to Yahweh and, in a fit of religious zeal, they make a covenant before Him in the temple to implement the command contained within the Mosaic covenant (Jer. 34:13-14) to release Hebrew slaves (see Exod. 21:1-11; Deut. 15:12-18).  Dishonorably they went back on their oath and took the slaves back (Jer. 34:8-11); an action that provoked the following response:

you recently turned and did what was right in My sight—every man proclaiming liberty to his neighbor; and you made a covenant before Me in the house which is called by My name. ‘Then you turned around and profaned My name, and every one of you brought back his male and female slaves, whom you had set at liberty, at their pleasure, and brought them back into subjection, to be your male and female slaves.’  “Therefore thus says the LORD: ‘You have not obeyed Me in proclaiming liberty, everyone to his brother and every one to his neighbor. Behold, I proclaim liberty to you,’ says the LORD—‘to the sword, to pestilence, and to famine! And I will deliver you to trouble among all the kingdoms of the earth. – Jeremiah 34:15-17

All is clear.  Because the king and his nobles initially respected God’s covenant stipulations about the liberating of slaves, but then shamefully went back on their word, they profaned God’s holy name.  The crime was made more shameful by the fact that it was a Sabbatical year.[1]  God in return would proclaim a “liberty” to them – a pun on their treachery – to the instruments of destruction.

Then comes the theological hammer blow:

And I will give the men who have transgressed My covenant, who have not performed the words of the covenant which they made before Me, when they cut the calf in two and passed between the parts of it… – Jeremiah 34:18 (Italics added)

Although most interpreters of Jeremiah pass over it, what Yahweh has just said in this verse is of supremest importance for the right treatment of the biblical covenants, and for the interpretation of Scripture.  The basic lesson is that God takes a dim view of the leaders of Judah who went back on their covenant, and again subjugated those who they had sworn to set free.

But the profound truth which can be rightly inferred from Yahweh’s attitude is that He expects those who enter into a solemn covenant oath to “perform the words (dabar) of the covenant.”  The words spoken in the covenant-making rite mean what they say!  If Zedekiah and the princes did not intend to actually perform these words they ought not to have vowed to do them.  That is the clear message from God to them (and to us).  Covenants are not things you can manipulate after-the-fact to suit yourself.  They were and are inflexible things.  The very unyielding quality of covenants underlined their solemnity and reliability.  That is precisely why God makes covenants.  He wants us to know that He means what He says!

The stunning upshot from this is only fully seen once one has comprehended the fact that the Speaker pronouncing doom upon oath-breakers is a Covenant-Maker bar none!  God Himself requires that those who enter into an oath perform their words (cf. Eccles. 8:2; 1 Ki.2:42-43; Psa. 89:34).  As Ezekiel asks about Zedekiah’s abortive attempt to secure the help of Egypt, which involved him breaking the oath he took before Nebuchadnezzar (Ezek. 17:11-19), “Can he break a covenant and still be delivered?” (Ezek. 17:15c).  A covenant that does not mean what it says and whose words are not binding on the one that made the oath is the most foolish and deceitful of things: it is the epitome of the abuse of language.

But it is just at this point that we are confronted by the obvious reference to what God did when making the Abrahamic covenant in Genesis 15.  He alone passed between the divided animal parts and spoke the “words of the covenant” made with the sleeping patriarch as He did so (see esp. Gen. 15:17-21).  Would the covenant God fail to perform the terms of an oath that He alone entered in to?  If so, what would be the point of being a covenant God (cf. Heb. 6:13-18)?  And if He is at least as faithful to His oaths as He expects others to be (in the midst of repeating His own pledges through the prophet – Jer. 31:31-37 & 33:17-26), then the recipients of a divine oath are on the most solid and unmovable ground imaginable!