申命记 6:10

"And it shall be, when Jehovah thy God shall bring thee into the land which he sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give thee, great and goodly cities, which thou buildedst not, and houses full of all good things, which thou filledst not, and cisterns hewn out, which thou hewedst not, vineyards and olive trees, which thou plantedst not, and thou shalt eat and be full; then beware lest thou forget Jehovah, who brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt fear Jehovah thy God; and him shalt thou serve, and shalt sware by his name. Ye shall not go after other gods, of the gods of the peoples that are round about you; for Jehovah thy God in the midst of thee is a jealous God; lest the anger of Jehovah thy God be kindled against thee, and he destroy thee from off the face of the earth.

The great thrust of this passage is, "Beware, lest thou forget Jehovah." This warning is repeated several times in Deuteronomy, but it was never seriously heeded by the chosen people. (For a sermon on the subject of "Forgetting God," see Volume 2, pp. 211-213 of the Minor Prophets in my series of commentaries.)

"And shalt swear by his name ..." This commandment was not contradicted by Jesus who indeed said, "Swear not at all," because Jesus in that passage was NOT speaking of taking an oath in court. This, of course, is disputed by some, and, in our country, a Christian may elect to say, "I affirm," instead of "I swear," and no Christian should hesitate to take advantage of such a choice. "The command to `Swear by his Name,' is not inconsistent with the Lord's injunction, `Swear not at all' (Matthew 5:34). Moses refers to legal swearing, and our Lord refers to swearing in common circumstances."[26] It appears here that Moses was not encouraging swearing, but ruling that when an oath was required that it should not be in any other name than that of the Lord.

"And destroy thee from the face of the earth ..." (Deuteronomy 6:15). This cannot be an idle word in this great book. It applies not merely to Israel alone but to the entirety of Adam's race. The continued rebellion of Adam (in the sense of all his posterity) will finally end in the great holocaust that shall usher in the final judgment. (See extensive comment on this in Zephaniah under Zephaniah 1:3 (Minor Prophets Vol. 3, pp. 131-132.)). Moses did not mention here all of Adam's race, but Zephaniah 1:3 makes it certain that the warning reaches to the very last one of Adam's earthly posterity. The great sorrow is that mankind, in the general sense, seems just as stubbornly set upon a course of rebellion against God as is secular Israel itself. The end of this will come when "God will wipe this Adam off the face of the earth."