In every age and among every people, an oath bound the person who had to fulfill it, otherwise consequences would fall on his head that he would have cause to regret. It is no accident that the ancients...
In every age and among every people, an oath bound the person who had to fulfill it, otherwise consequences would fall on his head that he would have cause to regret. It is no accident that the ancients, including adherents of Yahwism, swore by the names of their gods. In Yahwism too it was customary to swear by the name of God, the name of Yahweh. In this way a person called as witnesses and guarantors of what had been promised those whom it was either simply impossible, or at least mortally dangerous, to deceive.
At the same time, however, a natural question arose: did every promise please those who, according to the intention of the one swearing, were supposed to guarantee its fulfillment? Take Herod's oath, for example. Most likely, he too swore by the name of Yahweh, in whom perhaps he did not truly believe. But does this mean that Yahweh really became the guarantor of Herod's oath? The question is rhetorical: an oath by the name of any god, not to mention the One God, presupposed involvement in deep relations with the one by whose name you swear. This cannot be said of Herod and Yahweh: their relations were the most superficial kind, if they existed at all.
But there was something else: false pride, which at times makes a person, out of a desire to appear "tough," do something he will most likely regret deeply afterward. That is what happened with Herod. He hated and feared John, and at the same time involuntarily respected him, so much that, while holding him in prison for especially dangerous criminals, Herod nevertheless came more than once to speak with him. He hardly wanted John's death. He only wanted John to be silent, so that his denunciations of Herod's sins and crimes would not sound publicly.
Things happened differently, however: a rash oath and the unwillingness to "lose face" in the eyes of those around him made Herod a murderer. Of course, this murder was not the first in his life and not the last, but here it was the murder of a prophet, a man of God, whom Herod moreover had not wanted to kill. So pride and false ideas of honor take a person captive, forcing him to do what otherwise he would never have done. It is a terrible case, but for the fallen world, alas, entirely characteristic.
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4:9 We need not write - Largely. For ye are taught of God - By his Spirit.
4:11 That ye study - Literally, that ye be ambitious: an ambition worthy a Christian. To work with your hands - Not a needless caution; for temporal concerns are often a cross to them who are newly filled with the love of God.