NOTES for Lev 19:12

An oath by the name of gods or spirits was considered sacred from ancient times, even in pre-biblical, pre-Yahwistic times. In this case, when promising something to another person or to himself, the one making the promise as it were called as witnesses those whose names he mentioned. Yahwistic practice in this sense differed little from pagan practice: swearing by God, a person called Him as witness to the promise given, usually a promise to do something for himself or for another. Say, to avenge himself on an enemy. Or to do something for a friend. For a partner. For a master. Or to thank God Himself by offering, for example, a thanksgiving sacrifice if the matter ended well.

Or to donate a certain sum to the Temple. Or to do some other good deed. Or even a bad one, if enemies were involved. It happened, for example, that people swore by God's name to punish a murderer, to avenge him. But whatever the matter was, the meaning of the oath was always the same: God was made at minimum a witness, and at maximum a participant in one or another human plan or design. Often without even bothering to ask Him how He Himself regarded what was planned. In the time of Moses, Joshua, or David, however, it was assumed by default that God could always be called as witness, provided, of course, that there was no direct violation of the Torah, the Law given by God.

In this sense the Book of Leviticus commands not to "swear falsely." The issue is not only that one must not promise what one does not intend to fulfill, or even what one is not sure one can fulfill. The issue is that one must not call God as witness when one has planned something contrary to the Torah. There He certainly will not want to be a witness. But there is, of course, a more serious problem connected with such oaths: the very one because of which Jesus, as is known, forbids His followers to swear by God's name at all. Indeed, a person who gives such an oath takes on an unconditional obligation to fulfill it.

In practice, of course, circumstances that lawyers call force majeure have in every age been considered sufficient grounds for refusing to fulfill a given oath or vow. But this is still a certain concession, a step toward human weakness. Strictly speaking, an oath or vow given in God's name must be fulfilled in any case, or one must die. If the question were put that way, there would hardly be many who wanted to swear by God's name.

And yet in God's eyes this is exactly how the matter stands. And if a person cannot answer even for himself, if only because none of us knows what will happen to him tomorrow, then giving such self-confident oaths and making no less self-confident vows hardly makes sense. This is what Jesus reminds His listeners of, warning them against oaths in God's name whose fulfillment they can never be sure of, simply because they do not belong to themselves, but precisely to the One by whose name they swear.

Chapter 19 begins the second part of the Book of Leviticus, the part biblical scholars have called the Holiness Code. This name is not accidental: in it God's words are repeated like a refrain, "be holy, because I, Yahweh your God, am holy." What, then, does holiness mean here? Today, as a rule, we understand holiness as righteousness, and specifically Christian righteousness. Those who have become models of such righteousness are the ones we usually call saints. Yet in the Book of Leviticus, and especially in its second part, holiness is understood in a sense already not very different from the New Testament sense.

Here holiness means the state of a person's sanctification, the very state a person acquires when he remains in God's presence. A person became such every time he came to the altar and participated in sacrifice, for there at the altar God was completely and really present, and a person, if he was open to Him, changed just as completely and really as a result of meeting Him.

The problem, however, was that after returning to ordinary everyday life, a person again slid back, becoming what he had been before the encounter with God. The state of sanctification, or holiness, was not stable; it was only temporary, although for truly believing people it was regular enough, since such people usually came to the altar no less than once a week.

For a believing Yahwist, purity had traditionally been considered the main thing: the state of purity made a person ready to meet God and to be sanctified. Now, however, the aim of the believing Yahwist's life becomes not purity, but sanctification itself, holiness as an ordinary, everyday state. This was, of course, an immense task: the revelation had been received, but how to carry it out was not yet clear.

New revelations were needed here, and they came through the prophets, those whom biblical scholars usually call the later prophets, beginning with Amos and ending with Malachi. For the moment, however, the Book of Leviticus offers those seeking a full spiritual life and a relationship with God strict and unwavering observance of all the commandments and all the norms of ritual purity. The goal is clear: to live in such a way as to allow no defilement at all in one's life, not even the slightest. It seemed that if one lived this way, the goal would be reached. It took the experience of many centuries to understand that everything is not so simple and that the goal is not reached by this method; but that is another story.

We have already seen many definitions of holiness in the Book of Leviticus: as dedication to God, as belonging to His people, as religious and moral purity. Today's chapter also begins with a call to holiness: "You shall be holy, for I am holy." But most of the commandments in this chapter we would perhaps call "norms of social behavior" or "signs of civil society." Among them are commandments about mercy to the poor, honesty in trade, peace with neighbors, and care for parents. It turns out that these are not merely "worldly concerns" unrelated to religion, but no less than the path of holiness.

This path is different in that it cannot be walked only alone. It is the path of society as a single whole - a society that begins with our families and ends with an entire country and the world community. Those accustomed to thinking that holiness is each person's private matter should remember that it can also be a work done together - with the whole world.