Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain

“Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain” (KJV; also “You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God” (NRSV) and variants) is one of the Ten Commandments.

It is a prohibition of blasphemy, specifically, the misuse or “taking in vain” of the name of the God of Israel. Exodus 20:7 reads:

Based on this commandment, Second Temple Judaism by the Hellenistic period developed a taboo of pronouncing the name of God at all, resulting in the replacement of the Tetragrammaton by “Adonai” (literally “my lords” – see Adonai) in pronunciation.

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Author: Wikipedia

Keywords: Swearing, Swore, Swearing on a Bible, Cursing, blasphemy, Blaspheme, Blasphemer, Oath, Misusing God's Name, Taking God's name in vain, God's name, Name of God, Ten Commandments, 10 Commandments

Bible reference(s): Exodus 20:7, Leviticus 19:12, Leviticus 24:11-16, Deuteronomy 5:11, 2Sam 21:12, Proverbs 30:9, Matthew 5:33-37, Matthew 23:16-22, Hebrews 6:16, James 5:12

Source: This article uses material from the Wikipedia article “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain,” which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

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