Verse 34
34. Swear not at all Neither in his prohibition of swearing nor of violence (38-42) is our Lord giving any law for the magistrate or the governmental regulations, but for private conduct. The officer of government has still a right to use force, and the magistrate to administer an oath. In fact, to forbid these things in private life secures that they may be done magistratively with better effect.
None of the oaths which our Lord adduces as specimens are judicial oaths. The Orientalists are great profane swearers, and the secondary oaths here forbidden by our Lord are just the ordinary profanities of their conversation. Dr. Thomson (vol. i, p. 284) says: “This people are fearfully profane. Everybody curses and swears when in a passion. No people that I have ever known can compare with these Orientals for profaneness in the use of the names and attributes of God.… They swear by the head, by their life, by heaven, and by the temple, or, what is in its place, the church. The forms of cursing and swearing, however, are almost infinite, and fall on the pained ear all day long.” Our Lord’s caution not to forswear is given because the people held that to violate these minor oaths of conversation was no perjury. Our Lord not only pronounces it to be forswearing, but forbids the swearing at all.
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