diacrisis

Previously, I wondered if speech was a critical component in our talkingtogod. I posed the question, "what if God can't hear you unless you pray out loud?"

That question was facetiously rhetorical. But now we get to the question of vows. Here's Deut 23:21-23:

When you make a vow to the LORD your God, you shall not delay to pay it, for it would be sin in you, and the LORD your God will surely require it of you. However, if you refrain from vowing, it would not be sin in you. You shall be careful to perform what goes out from your lips, just as you have voluntarily vowed to the LORD your God, what you have promised.

Ah so. Note particularly the mention of lips. Actual heard vocalization is the issue here, folks. If you think it, who cares; if you speak it, it's binding.

There's even a whole category of offerings for this--if you've ever read the phrase "votive offering" in your Bible and never bothered to look it up, it means a sacrifice given in fulfillment of a vow. For example, here's Judges 11:30-31:

Jephthah made a vow to the LORD and said, "If You will indeed give the sons of Ammon into my hand, then it shall be that whatever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me when I return in peace from the sons of Ammon, it shall be the LORD'S, and I will offer it up as a burnt offering."

Too bad that "first thing" was his only daughter. But he kept his vow. Is that at odds with your concept of what God approves of? Could he really prefer vow-keeping over a human life? I like what Alan Friedman (pdf) has to say on this point: "A person who invokes a neder (vow) or a sh’vuah (oath) places upon himself, upon others, or upon objects a status equal to a commandment from the Torah... "Giving one’s word," then, is not so much a point of honor as it is a sacred and binding obligation... breaking a pledge — that is, desecrating one’s word — is not just a personal failure; it is a chillul ha-Shem, a profanation of God’s holy Name." In our Society of Fairness we easily forget that punishment "was always...the sovereign's personal vendetta. The excess of punishment had to respond to the excess of the crime and triumph over it" (Abnormal, pp 82-3, but the subject is covered in much more detail in Discipline and Punish).

The power of speech is so strong that Jesus contradicts the words of the Father:

Again, you have heard that the ancients were told, 'YOU SHALL NOT MAKE FALSE VOWS, BUT SHALL FULFILL YOUR VOWS TO THE LORD.' But I say to you, make no oath at all... But let your statement be, 'Yes, yes' or 'No, no'; anything beyond these is of evil.

"The ancients were told" by God himself. I shouldn't have said "contradict" because you all think God never changes and I'm going to be stoned. But too late now. At any rate, Jesus still apparently allows people to speak aloud. I've heard many exegetes claim that he meant your 'yes' and 'no' should be as strong as oaths anyway, so the oaths are superfluous. I don't think that's right, given the Deuteronomy context; rather, he seems to be saying (along with a whole lot of other Rabbis) that speech at the obligation/binding-level of vows is to be avoided completely.

Aside: I have to laugh at Barnes' conflation of oaths with profanity. It really is quite comical and... quaint. I think it's pretty obvious that Jesus is deprecating true oaths as well as false ones. Matthew Henry missed it badly, too, and thinks Jesus means "oath" as calling God as a witness to the truth, instead of "oath" as a promised human act of sacrifice.

So, bottom line: don't ever make promises to God out loud, but if you ever do by mistake, you damn well better keep your promise. If you make promises to him in your head, fine--that's just neurons firing away in blissful irresponsibility. Don't sweat it.