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

Part of a series on the
Ten Commandments
I am the LORD thy God No other gods before me No graven images or likenesses Not take the LORD's name in vain Remember the sabbath day Honour thy father and thy mother Thou shalt not kill Thou shalt not commit adultery Thou shalt not steal Thou shalt not bear false witness Thou shalt not covet
Related articles
Tablets of Stone Ritual Decalogue Finger of God Moses Ark of the Covenant Mount Sinai In Catholic theology
v t e

"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, Hebrew: לֹא תִשָּׂא אֶת-שֵׁם-ה' אֱלֹהֶיךָ לַשָּׁוְא, romanized: Lōʾ t̲iśśāʾ ʾet̲-šēm-ʾăd̲ōnāi ʾĕlōhêk̲ā laššāwəʾ) is the second or third (depending on numbering) of God's Ten Commandments to man in Judaism and Christianity.

Exodus 20:7 and Deuteronomy 5:11 read:

Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.^[1][2]

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

In the Hebrew Bible itself, the commandment is directed against abuse of the name of God, not against any use; there are numerous examples in the Hebrew Bible and a few in the New Testament where God's name is called upon in oaths to tell the truth or to support the truth of the statement being sworn to, and the books of Daniel and Revelation include instances where an angel sent by God invokes the name of God to support the truth of apocalyptic revelations.^[3] God himself is presented as swearing by his own name ("As surely as I live …") to guarantee the certainty of various events foretold through the prophets.^[4]