The word oath appears 59 times in the KJV of the Bible, 45 times in the Old Testament and 14 times in the New Testament. Many of the oaths were from God and others from people.
God made several oaths to Abraham and his descendants. A few include:
God promised Isaac in Genesis 26:3-4, "Sojourn in this land, and I will be with thee, and will bless thee; for unto thee, and unto thy seed, I will give all these countries, and I will perform the oath which I sware unto Abraham thy father; And I will make thy seed to multiply as the stars of heaven, and will give unto thy seed all these countries; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed."
Deuteronomy 7:8, “But because the Lord loved you, and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers, hath the Lord brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you out of the house of bondmen, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.”
I Chronicles 16: 13-18, “O ye seed of Israel His servant, ye children of Jacob, His chosen ones. He is the Lord our God; His judgments are in all the earth. Be ye mindful always of His covenant; the word which He commanded to a thousand generations; Even of the covenant which He made with Abraham, and of His oath unto Isaac; And hath confirmed the same to Jacob for a law, and to Israel for an everlasting covenant, Saying, Unto thee will I give the land of Canaan, the lot of your inheritance.”
Then there are warnings about making and keeping oath:
Ecclesiastes 8:2, “I counsel thee to keep the king's commandment, and that in regard of the oath of God.”
James warns us in 5:12, “But above all things, my brethren, swear not, neither by heaven, neither by the earth, neither by any other oath: but let your yea be yea; and your nay, nay; lest ye fall into condemnation.” Taking an oath and not honoring it can lead condemnation. I no longer say, “I swear that…”
To his great shame, Peter lied, Matthew 26:72, “And again he denied with an oath, I do not know the man” fulfilling Jesus’ prophecy “That this night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice.”
God takes the keeping of his oath very seriously and has made several unconditional covenants with Israel. If God doesn’t keep his oaths to Israel we Gentiles are indeed lost. Thankfully, Psalm 103:12, “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.”
We should be very careful when making an oath or when making a vow as in the case of Jephthah, a Gileadite. He made a tragic vow and both he and his daughter paid the price.
Judge 11:30-31, "30 And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the LORD, and said, If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands, 31 Then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the LORD'S, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering.”
Vowed, H5087. While not an oath it is a promise (positively, to do or give something to God): - (make a) vow.
Unfortunate, Judge 11:34 "And Jephthah came to Mizpeh unto his house, and, behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances: and she was his only child; beside her he had neither son nor daughter."
I can nearly feel the pain of both Jephthah and his daughter in reading Judges 11:36-40. His daughter asked "let me alone two months, that I may go up and down upon the mountains, and bewail my virginity, I and my fellows." At the end of two months "she returned unto her father, who did with her according to his vow which he had vowed: and she knew no man."
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