Taking God’s Name in Vain Has Nothing to Do With Cursing with Dr. Carmen Joy Imes

Johnny Ova: Welcome everybody to the Dig In Podcast. I am your host, Pastor Johnny Ova, and today we have the privilege of having Dr. Carmen Joy Imes with us. Dr. Imes, thank you so much for joining us. We get to talk about some cussing today. We're talking about cursing, or taking the Lord's name in vain. One of the two.

Dr. Carmen Joy Imes: Is that what we're going to talk about? Glad to be here for it.

Johnny Ova: Most people hear "do not take the Lord's name in vain" and immediately think of swearing or cursing, and you say that reading misses what the command is actually about. Let's start high level. Where does the common understanding go wrong?

Dr. Carmen Joy Imes: It assumes that this command has something to do with speech. Actually, in the Hebrew text there's no signal that we're talking about speaking. Instead, the Hebrew reads, you shall not carry the name of Yahweh your God in vain. Most translators and interpreters who have looked at the Hebrew text have come to that and said, well, that doesn't make sense. We don't carry names, we say them, so this must be telling us not to say it a certain way.

Johnny Ova: It's funny, because we've been discussing this with previous guests, and it's all about the translations: trying to translate the ancient Hebrew text into modern English, which is almost impossible to do word for word, so there are some liberties taken. Why do you think we think of speaking with that translation, versus carrying? What's the difference there?

Dr. Carmen Joy Imes: We think of a name as something that we say, but names had a wider significance in the ancient world. I think they also have that broader significance in the world today, but for some reason the history of interpretation of this command has been locked into saying God's name, either as a swear word, or cursing someone in God's name. A more sophisticated way of thinking about it is using God's name to authorize magic or to authorize a message. Those actually fit a little better in the ancient context. But all of these relate to speaking, I think just because the history of interpretation has been locked into this for so long.

Dr. Carmen Joy Imes: We can find interpreters very early on who saw this more broadly as representation, which is what I'm going to argue it's actually about: that God's people have been stamped with his name to say that they belong to him, and therefore they enter into a vocation of representing him. You can find this very early on, but I think maybe the human desire for certainty, just tell me exactly what I can't do, is what closed this down into speech-related interpretations.

Johnny Ova: Why did so many translators land on "take," and how do you think that choice has shaped the way the church has read this?

Dr. Carmen Joy Imes: I don't know how we landed on "take." It's a decent translation of the Greek Septuagint. The Greek translation of the Hebrew, way back, uses the word lambano, which can mean to take or receive. That actually still works with the way I read the command: you shall not receive the name of Yahweh your God in vain. Don't receive his stamp on you that says you belong to him and then not live like you belong to him. That actually works. But somehow the English idiom of taking the name in vain came to be associated with using God's name as a swear word, which I guarantee ancient people were not in danger of doing. They're not riding down the road in their chariot, somebody cuts them off, and they're yelling, Baal. That's not what's coming out of their mouth at that point.

Johnny Ova: Too funny. Like I said, one of our previous guests has sat on a translation committee, and hearing about the back and forth over how to get the meaning properly laid out in English, that must be such a struggle.

Dr. Carmen Joy Imes: Yes. I've not been on a translation committee, so I haven't been in the trenches wrestling the way these groups have, and I'm so thankful for their work. As you said, languages don't map exactly onto each other. You can't just plug in the same English word every time you see the same Hebrew word and expect it to communicate, because in our languages each word has its own range of meaning, and the range and connotations of a word aren't going to exactly match a similar word in another language.

Dr. Carmen Joy Imes: I think what's happening here is that we have a metaphor. God is claiming the people of Israel as his own people, and he's saying, don't carry my name in vain. They're not literally carrying his name. It's based on the metaphorical idea of wearing his name as a tattoo or a brand, and that underlying metaphor is what makes it make sense. What's happened in our English Bibles is that the metaphor has been lost. They've tried to make it make sense in English, but we lose the metaphor, and then we lose the connection with the biblical theme of carrying God's name. I think it would be better to just translate it: you shall not carry, or you shall not bear, the name of Yahweh your God in vain. Then people go, well, what does that mean? And you could have a study note explaining it and connecting it to the passages that help it make sense.

Johnny Ova: That's great. You connect this command to the high priest, who literally carried the names of the tribes on his shoulders and chest. How does the priest function as a picture of what the whole nation was? We've got figures.

Dr. Carmen Joy Imes: I've got my little high priest here. You can see he's got twelve gemstones on his chest. In Exodus 28 it says Aaron shall bear the names of the sons of Israel on the breastpiece of judgment. It's the same phrase we get in the command. Nasa is the word for bear, and shem is name, so this is nasa shemot, bear the names, plural. As you said, he has six names on each shoulder. Then on his forehead he has a gold medallion that says "holy, belonging to Yahweh." So Aaron literally carries God's name on his body.

Dr. Carmen Joy Imes: God has just said to the people as they arrive at Mount Sinai, you will be for me a kingdom of priests. He's told them they're going to function in a way analogous to a priest, and then he dresses the high priest as someone who carries the names of the tribes and God's name on his forehead. That signals that he is the mediator between God and these twelve tribes, and that his work in the tabernacle is representative. He represents them before God, and he represents God before them. I think this is God's way of saying to the people: this is like you. You belong to me, I've placed my name on you, now you represent me to the nations.

Johnny Ova: You have your figure, and I've got mine. A little behind the scenes: I used to be a professional wrestler, so that's actually me. Two people have asked, who's that behind you, is that He-Man? I take the compliment very much. Not He-Man exactly, but it's me in my younger days.

Dr. Carmen Joy Imes: That's great. I don't have any mini-figure of me. I just have Aaron. Here's Moses. I don't look like Moses either. I would have to shave my head. This one's hairless.

Johnny Ova: Don't do that. You describe Israel as being marked with God's name like an invisible tattoo. What do you think it means to be branded as God's own, and who was meant to see that mark?

Dr. Carmen Joy Imes: In the ancient world, tattoos often signified the position of a slave. If you were a slave to someone, you would be tattooed or branded with the name of your owner to show that you belonged to them, so that if you ran away, they would know you weren't legally allowed to be there. The Bible describes this practice to some extent. We get some hints of it. It never prescribes it. In fact, it says you shall not tattoo yourselves. I think the reason the Old Testament law prohibits tattoos is that a tattoo would be a competing mark of allegiance. God has said, you're mine, I've placed my name on you.

Dr. Carmen Joy Imes: This is clear in Numbers 6:27, when Moses tells Aaron what to say as part of the priestly blessing. After the tabernacle is in full operation, God's presence is there. Aaron comes out from the presence of the Lord, lifts his arms and pronounces a blessing: may Yahweh bless you and keep you, may Yahweh make his face shine upon you. There's this threefold repetition of the divine name over the people, and then it says, so you shall put my name on them, and I will bless them. That's the moment of branding, as if to say, you're no longer slaves to Pharaoh. I've set you free. Now you belong to me. Which is to say, the book of Exodus is not about setting people free for freedom's sake. It's about a change of master. They no longer belong to Pharaoh. They now belong to Yahweh.

Dr. Carmen Joy Imes: In Deuteronomy 26 he calls them a people holy, belonging to Yahweh. Most translations just have "holy to Yahweh." I happen to have it on my wrist. It might be in reverse on my screen. The name Yahweh has a letter lamed in front of it, which is how they would indicate ownership. If you had a signet ring inscribed with your name, it would be L plus your name. Yours would say la Johnny, a way of saying belonging to Johnny, and you could stamp it in wax or clay on documents to show your authorization. On the high priest's forehead it says qadosh la Yahweh, holy, belonging to Yahweh, as if the high priest has been stamped with God's signet ring on his forehead. He's set apart to belong to Yahweh.

Dr. Carmen Joy Imes: So I think it's clear in Numbers 6:27 that this has happened verbally. They've been verbally branded with God's name. Then in Deuteronomy 26 he says, I've selected you as my treasured possession. You will be for me a people holy, belonging to Yahweh. It uses the same phrase that's on the high priest's forehead to refer to the entire nation, again reinforcing the idea that they're the kingdom of priests.

Johnny Ova: Wow. You said slaves would be marked physically with tattoos, and now we're talking about almost a spiritual declaration: you're marked for God now. A side question: I've heard about markings on some of the apostles or other Christians in the early church. Have you heard of them physically marking themselves, tattoos with the word or something like that?

Dr. Carmen Joy Imes: The only thing I've heard along those lines is that Paul says he bears in his body the marks of Jesus. I think stigmata is the Greek word there, and that can be related to a tattoo, some kind of bodily marking. I'm not familiar with New Testament practices on that, and I wouldn't want to say every ancient slave was tattooed. I don't think we can say that for certain. But we do know there were people in the ancient world who were marked with the name of their owner, including priestesses in the temple of Ishtar, who would be marked on their hands with the symbol of Ishtar as a way of saying, I've dedicated my life to her service. Sometimes they even had a tattoo or brand on their cheek. So when God says not to tattoo themselves, he's saying, you're mine, so don't mark your body in any way that would compete with my claim on you.

Johnny Ova: That makes sense. So if the command is not about pronunciation, and we're talking about the mark, what does it mean to carry God's name in vain? What is the actual offense being named?

Dr. Carmen Joy Imes: "In vain" is a way of saying in an empty manner, without any substance to it. You say you belong to Yahweh, but you're a total jerk to people all the time. Or in practice you're depending on other gods, worshiping other gods, looking elsewhere for your needs to be met. God has claimed them as his own, and they've received that name. They need to live like Yahweh is their God, which means exclusive worship. It means loving their neighbor as themselves, because their neighbors are also in covenant with Yahweh. If you murder your neighbor or take his wife or his property, it's like attacking someone who belongs to Yahweh. So it's like attacking Yahweh.

Johnny Ova: Once you read this command this way, it almost reframes the entire picture. How does bearing God's name change the way you read the rest of the Ten Commandments?

Dr. Carmen Joy Imes: For me it changes the way I read the rest of the Old Testament and the New Testament, because it reframes God's law not as things they had to do to get saved, but as how you fulfill your mission as a people who are my representatives in the world. They're already saved when they get to Sinai. God has already said, you belong to me, we're in covenant with each other, I have rescued you from slavery. Now that you belong to me, here's how I want you to live. So the laws become a way of governing their shared life, so that they can be a city on a hill, a place where God's character is on display to a watching world. All the commands relate to that mission. They're not random, arbitrary things God is thinking up to make people's lives more difficult. He actually wants people to flourish, and these are the boundaries he's setting up so that people don't get taken advantage of.

Dr. Carmen Joy Imes: Once you see it in that light and look at one command after another, you start to see God's character on display. You have to read it in its cultural context. These laws were not addressing a modern context, and for that reason some of them feel off to us. Why are they talking like this? Because it's a cross-cultural experience to read the Old Testament. I'm going to argue that all ten commandments are about expressing loyalty to Yahweh, and all ten are about loving your neighbor. Sometimes people divide them into two groups, the first ones about God and the rest about the neighbor, and you'll find people dividing them at four and six, or five and five, or three and seven. Then they'll say the commands were split between the front and back of a tablet, or between one tablet and the other. And I'm like, no, that's not how treaties worked.

Dr. Carmen Joy Imes: If you and I are members of ancient Israel and I start worshiping Marduk, you are now in danger, because you're seeing me do this, and if you tolerate it, you come under God's judgment as well. So it's not good love of neighbor to go apostate and worship other gods. And as I said earlier, if I murder you, my neighbor, I'm attacking Yahweh, because you belong to Yahweh. There's an interconnection between the divine-human relationship and the horizontal human relationships, and all of them need to be marked by the recognition that we belong to God and we're about his mission in the world.

Johnny Ova: It's almost like making the translation so black and white, so simple, just "don't curse," flattens the depth, the richness and the fullness of the word of God that's trying to be displayed to us.

Dr. Carmen Joy Imes: Yes. And should we curse? No, of course we should not use God's name as a swear word, because that would be a flippant representation of God instead of treating his name with the weightiness it deserves. But we've narrowed the command down to this one little thing: well, I don't take the Lord's name in vain. Really it's much bigger, and it encompasses every area of life. I think that's why it's near the top of the list. If it were just about the way you say God's name, wouldn't it be down there with not bearing false witness, with what you say about others? Because it's at the top, I think it reframes everything.

Dr. Carmen Joy Imes: There's a lot of debate through history about how to count the Ten Commandments. There are whole systems. I have charts in my forthcoming commentary that show which traditions count them which way, because the Bible says there are ten but doesn't number them for us. As I count them, the first is not to have other gods, not to worship other gods. That includes what some people count as one and two, no other gods and no worshiping idols. Worshiping an idol is having another god, and in the ancient world you don't have another god without an idol of that god to worship. So I think it's one command, and there are grammatical arguments for that. That makes the second command: don't misrepresent God, don't bear his name in vain. The first two capture the covenant relationship: I will be your God, and you will be my people. The last eight commands flow out from that.

Johnny Ova: Israel was given this name to carry, and the Old Testament is largely the story of how they carried it. How did Israel fail to bear the name well, and what was at stake when they did?

Dr. Carmen Joy Imes: There are so many stories in the Old Testament of how things went off the rails: kings who built temples to other gods, set up high places and Asherah poles, built golden calves, lots of ways of worshiping other gods, which violated the covenant stipulations, the Ten Commandments. All of it was a way of bearing God's name in vain, because the nations around them say, look, they're doing what we do. They're trying to be just like us, instead of seeing the distinctiveness of their worship of Yahweh. What was at stake was this: God said, this land belongs to me, and I'm giving it to you as long as you walk faithfully with me. If you begin to act like the nations, I will take the land away from you too, just like I took it from them.

Dr. Carmen Joy Imes: So you end up with the most massive crisis of the Old Testament, which is the exile. First the Assyrians attack and scatter the northern kingdom, and then the Babylonians come and carry the southern kingdom into captivity. I think the best place to see this dynamic at work is Ezekiel 36. In that chapter Ezekiel explains what happened to God's name when the people went into exile. Other nations saw it happening and concluded that Yahweh must not be strong enough to protect his people. That's not the case. Yahweh is plenty strong. He's the strongest. This was his method of punishment. But his reputation gets sullied by the consequences of their unfaithfulness. So God says, for that reason I'm going to wash you clean, bring you back and reestablish you in the land, not because you deserve it, but for the sake of my name.

Johnny Ova: You're making my name look bad.

Dr. Carmen Joy Imes: Yes, you're making me look bad. This is bad PR, so we're going to clean things up and restart.

Johnny Ova: You tie this command directly to mission and ethics too. Can you explain the link between representing God among the nations and how the covenant people were called to live?

Dr. Carmen Joy Imes: We've already talked about how the law helped them fulfill their mission to represent God to the nations. The key factor is a Hebrew word in Exodus 19. In the same paragraph where God says you'll be for me a kingdom of priests, he says, you will be my treasured possession. That's the Hebrew word segullah. A segullah is an esteemed treaty partner with representative powers, a role like an ambassador. So God is appointing Israel as his ambassador to the nations. If, instead of demonstrating God's character and holiness to the nations, they start to absorb the behavior of the nations, the mission is in critical failure mode. The nations aren't going to see what Yahweh is really like.

Dr. Carmen Joy Imes: We have some great moments in the Old Testament where this goes well. Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, meets him in the wilderness, hears what God did to Pharaoh and gives all glory to Yahweh. Rahab in Jericho, a Canaanite prostitute, has a beautiful speech where she testifies: we know that Yahweh is the most powerful God, that he trampled Egypt and brought you here, and we're trembling in fear because of it. The word has spread, and she declares that she wants to be attached to Yahweh and his people. She defies her own king, her own culture and their gods in order to switch allegiance and declare faith in Yahweh. Ruth does the same thing: your people will be my people and your God my God. Naaman, the Syrian general, comes to the land of Israel, gets healed of his leprosy, and then asks, can I take some dirt back with me so that I have a way of worshiping Yahweh? Can I make my own little Israel spot where I can worship?

Dr. Carmen Joy Imes: So we have some good moments. But the dominant storyline in the Old Testament is the failure of God's people to carry his name well. I think that's why, when Jesus shows up on the scene, in his prayer in John 17 he talks about having revealed his Father's name to his disciples, made the name known to them. He's already thinking along these lines. And when he teaches them how to pray, he says, our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, or may your name be sanctified. I think that's a recognition that God's name had been dragged through the mud in the previous centuries because of the people's unfaithfulness. If you pray, may your name be holy, you're committing yourself to a life of holiness, because that's how God's name is sanctified. If you want good PR for God, you have to actually walk rightly with God.

Johnny Ova: That's a fascinating point. Let's get a little more into Jesus, because you've argued that the divine name gets transferred to Jesus, and that in some sense Jesus bears the name as Israel was always meant to. Can you walk us a little deeper through that move from Sinai to Christ?

Dr. Carmen Joy Imes: There are a number of places where we can see that connection. The book of Matthew presents Jesus as Israel in miniature. His childhood story recapitulates the story of Israel. He goes into Egypt and is brought out of Egypt. He's under threat of death by a terrible despot, a ruler who is killing babies, and God saves him from an innocent death. His baptism in the Jordan mirrors the crossing of the Jordan into the land. He goes into the wilderness for forty days, just as Israel was in the wilderness for forty years. Matthew goes to great lengths to tell Jesus' early years in ways that mirror Israel's story. I think he's setting us up to understand that Jesus is Israel, and now he's going to embody the mission of Israel, only he's going to do it well. Instead of failing, he's going to represent God's name well and show us how it should be done. So the New Testament writers can say we're supposed to imitate Christ, because he is the image of God in its fullness, and as we imitate him, we come into our true destiny.

Johnny Ova: What does that mean for us today, for believers who carry the name of Christ? What does it look like to bear the name well, and what does it look like to bear it in vain?

Dr. Carmen Joy Imes: Let me first share a passage that really sealed the deal for me and helped me see this is not just about ancient Israel or Jewish people bearing God's name, but about the church as well. In 1 Peter 2, Peter is writing to a mixed audience of Jewish and Gentile believers in Jesus scattered across Asia Minor. In verse 9 he says, but you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. In that verse he takes all the titles given to Israel at Mount Sinai and applies them to the church. To be clear, not because the church has replaced Israel, but because through our faith in Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, we've been grafted into the same covenant.

Dr. Carmen Joy Imes: That's why in my book, Bearing God's Name: Why Sinai Still Matters, I could say Sinai still matters, because we've been included in that same covenant by those titles being applied to us. If we want to know who we are and why we're here, we have to go back to Mount Sinai and understand how God is revealing himself there, how he is calling a people into being and how he is teaching them to live. That helps us see what it should look like for me to live in the world, and I think it takes shape in really similar ways. We're in a very different cultural context than ancient Israel, with different political and economic situations, so we can't just take the Old Testament laws and map them exactly onto our lives. But we can read them and ask: what's the principle at work in this law? What is it communicating about God's character in that ancient context, and how can I communicate that in my context?

Dr. Carmen Joy Imes: I already showed you my tattoo. The Old Testament law says not to have tattoos, so why do I have one if I think the law still matters? I've thought it through. Ancient tattoos marked someone as a slave for life, and God didn't want his people marking themselves as slaves to anyone else. So I marked myself as a slave to Yahweh, which is in keeping with that. Isaiah 44:5, I think, says that in that day the nations, the Gentiles, will write on their hand "belonging to Yahweh," as a way of saying, I want in. For me this was a way of honoring the law in a different cultural context, where tattoos have a different significance than they did in ancient times.

Johnny Ova: I think the tattoos were a little different too. We're not talking about "Mom" on my arm.

Dr. Carmen Joy Imes: Right. It says not to make tattoos or cut yourselves for the dead. I've had people ask me, uh-oh, I just got my mom's name on me because she died, should I not have done that? I think what's happening in the text is that people are so distraught over the death of a loved one that they're cutting their bodies in distress, maybe as a way of trying to contact the dead. That's not allowed. We shouldn't try to have contact with dead relatives. That's prohibited, because the reason people tried to contact the dead was to find out divine instructions for life today. God says, just come to me and ask me. I'll reveal my will to you. You don't have to go looking in odd places to find out what to do.

Johnny Ova: What is the strongest objection to your reading of the name command, and how do you answer it?

Dr. Carmen Joy Imes: Just before we hopped on this call, I was reading Bill Arnold's commentary on Deuteronomy for the first time, to see what he says about my reading of the name command. The Ten Commandments are repeated in Deuteronomy, so he had reason to talk about all of them again. He doesn't see representation as quite the meaning. He thinks names had power, so it was more about harnessing power. That could include religious rhetoric, saying God told me such and such and filling it in with your own words, or the manipulation of divine power by using God's name in magic. He includes all of that. I don't deny that could be part of the bigger picture. But look at how the Old Testament describes God's name being profaned. It's a whole variety of ways, including sexual ethics. It's not just the way you say God's name or use it for power. It says you're profaning my name because father and son go in to the same girl. That's a sexual ethic and an exploitation, and it profanes God's name. So it has to be bigger than how you say God's name.

Johnny Ova: I agree. I think that's part of it, but you're definitely onto it. By the way, we're going to link your book in the description, so if people want to check it out, please support.

Dr. Carmen Joy Imes: Cool. And if we have any super nerds listening, this is the published dissertation version, Bearing YHWH's Name at Sinai: A Reexamination of the Name Command of the Decalogue, which you should not buy if you're just a curious lay person. My grandma bought a copy and was very upset that she couldn't understand it, because there's Hebrew and Greek and Aramaic and lots of other languages, and it's very technical. That's why I wrote Bearing God's Name, so that anyone from high school on up can understand it.

Johnny Ova: We'll put both of them in there so people can find them. My last question for today, and again, I cannot thank you enough for your time. If someone walks away from this conversation having understood one thing about what it means to carry God's name, what do you want that one thing to be?

Dr. Carmen Joy Imes: I want Christians to know that your faith is not just something private and personal, nobody else's business. When you come to faith in Jesus, you are actually being given a role, a mission to represent God in the world. That's a high calling, and it's one we're meant to carry out together as part of a community, not trying to fly solo. It's common in the West to think of religion as private and personal, none of your business, but the Bible shows it's very much everyone's business. They are watching you whether you want to be watched or not. And they're drawing conclusions about what God is like because of the choices that you're making and the way that you live. Ultimately I think this is really empowering for somebody who wants a bigger purpose to live for. There's a built-in purpose when we come to faith in Christ. No matter what our actual job is, where we draw a paycheck or what we do with our time, the way we do it can bring honor to God's name.

Johnny Ova: That's right. Dr. Imes, this has been great. I cannot thank you enough for your time today. Thanks so much for joining us on the podcast.

Dr. Carmen Joy Imes: Thanks for having me.