Commentaria in Deuteronomium
Doctors everywhere hold that here not only perjury but all irreverence and abuse of the divine name is forbidden, so that the divine name, says Theodoret, be not named except for the sake of teaching, or prayer, or some necessity. For our version clearly signifies this, and the Septuagint: Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.
Note: By the name of God is here understood not only the tetragrammaton Jehovah, as the Hebrews will have it, but all other names of God, of whatever tongue; nay, that this precept is chiefly to be understood of the name of Jesus Abulensis proves, Question VII, on Exodus chapter xx, from the fact that the name Jesus is more venerable than the name God. For God signifies the Creator; but Jesus signifies God as redeemer and saviour. Hence the name Jesus adds to God, or the Creator, a new and greater title, namely that of Saviour.
For the moral enlargement of this precept, and how the name of God is to be used, and how grave a sin it is to abuse it by perjury, see St. Thomas in Opusculum VII, where among other things he says: By an oath we confess that the first truth is only in God; and in this reverence is paid to God. Hence the law commands that no one swear by idols, but by God. The perjurer therefore does an injury to God, to himself and to all men: first to God, because since to swear by God is nothing else than to invoke his testimony, when you swear falsely, you either believe that God does not know the truth, and so place ignorance in God, though all things are naked and open to his eyes; or that he loves a lie, though the Psalmist says: “Thou wilt destroy all that speak a lie”; or you detract from his power, as though he could not convict or punish perjury. Secondly, he does an injury to himself, because he binds himself to the judgment of God; for to say, By God it is so, is nothing else than, God punish me if it is not so. Thirdly, he injures other men; for no society among any can last unless they believe one another: but doubtful things are confirmed by oaths, and “an oath for confirmation is the end of all their controversy,” Hebrews vi, 16.
FOR HE SHALL NOT BE UNPUNISHED THAT TAKETH HIS NAME UPON A VAIN THING.—For “unpunished,” in Exodus xx, 7, it is “guiltless”; but “guiltless” there is taken for “unpunished,” by metonymy, as also often elsewhere, as in 1 Kings xxvi, 9; Proverbs xi, 21. The sense now is, as if to say: God will severely punish, either in this life or in the future, him who taketh the name of God in vain; it is a litotes, which is frequent with the Hebrews, as Micheas ii, 1: “Woe to you that devise what is unprofitable,” that is, sin, which is not only unprofitable but most harmful. 1 Kings xii, 21: “Turn not aside after vain things (idols) which shall not profit you,” that is, which will do you the greatest harm. Jeremias xxxii, 35: “Which I commanded not,” that is, which I severely forbade. So of Pallas, a man eminent in virtue, Virgil says, Æneid book XI: Whom, not lacking in virtue, the black day carried off.
Note: God, to this second precept, as to the first, appends a penalty, either on account of the gravity of the thing commanded, or to restrain the proneness of the Hebrews to violate them.
So God punished Israel with a three years’ famine for the perjury of Saul, by which, against the faith given by Josue, he slew the Gabaonites: whence the posterity of Saul were delivered to them, and were crucified by them; and so the plague ceased, 2 Kings xxi. So for the perjury of king Sedecias, Jerusalem and all Juda were overthrown, 4 Kings xxiv and xxv, and Ezechiel xvii. Moreover, God commanded the blasphemer to be stoned, Leviticus xxiv. The punishment of the blasphemer Sennacherib is also known, 4 Kings xix. Paul also delivered blasphemers to Satan, 1 Timothy i.
12. KEEP THE DAY OF THE SABBATH, TO SANCTIFY IT.—Here, as also in Exodus xx, the perfect precept of keeping the sabbath is given, the prelude and beginning of which preceded in the manna, Exodus xvi, 23, nay in the genesis of the world: for I showed on Genesis ii, 3, that the sabbath began to be kept from then.
Note: This precept, so far as it commands that a day and some time be given to public and external worship of God, is moral and natural: for the law of nature dictates that this be done; but so far as it determines the seventh day, or the sabbath, to this, and commands rest on it, it is ceremonial, and therefore now abolished in the new law. So St. Thomas, Note secondly: The sabbath, that is, the rest of God, in which God ceased from the work of creation on the seventh day of the world, was the sacrament and legal and ceremonial cause of this feast of the sabbath. This feast again was allegorically the type of the sabbath, that is, of the rest in which Christ rested in the sepulchre on the same day. Tropologically it was the type of our sabbath, in which we ought to cease from sins, concerning which see Athanasius, homily on that text, All things are delivered to me, and St. Jerome on Isaias lix, and St. Gregory, Register book XI, epistle 3. Anagogically the sabbath was the type and cause of the sabbath and eternal rest in heaven, as St. Paul teaches, Hebrews iv, 3, for, as St. John says, Apocalypse xiv, 13: “From henceforth now, saith the Spirit, that they rest from their labours; for their works follow them.” Hence Rupert expounds this precept anagogically thus, namely, in all thy works regard the recompense of God and the eternal rest prepared.
You will ask: What was the origin of the sabbath? The Gentiles, says Diodorus in the Catena of the Greeks on Exodus xx, thought that the Hebrews kept the sabbath in honour of Saturn; for they call the seventh day the day of Saturn, as they call the first the day of the Sun, the second of the Moon, the third of Mars, etc. But Seneca, as St. Augustine testifies, City of God book VI, chapter xi, laughs at the Jews, that they lose the seventh part of their life and age in idleness. Third, Plutarch, Symposiacs book IV, Question V, thinks that the Jews keep the sabbath in honour of Bacchus, who was called Sabos. Fourth, Apion in Josephus, book II against him, relates that the Jews, going out of Egypt, were afflicted with ulcers of the groin, which the Egyptians called sabbo, and that they ceased on the seventh day: and therefore that day was called the sabbath by them and kept. But these are inventions and calumnies of the Gentiles. Fifth, Lactantius, Institutes book VII, chapter xiv, thinks that the sabbath is named from seven, as if you should say, the seventh day. But it is plain that sabbath is not a Latin but a Hebrew word, and signifies rest, from the root shabath, that is, he rested.
I say therefore: The first origin and cause of instituting the sabbath was that men on the sabbath might ponder the work of creation, and the benefit of nature instituted and the universe founded by God, as is plain from Genesis ii, verse 3, and here verse 14.
The second cause was that the Hebrews on the sabbath might celebrate the memory of the laborious Egyptian servitude, and of their liberation from it: this cause is given here, verse 15; hence also on the eve of the sabbath they went out of Egypt, as I showed on Exodus xii, 41.
The third was that the sabbath, dedicated to God, might be a sign of the divine election, by which God adopted Israel to himself as a people before other nations. This cause is signified in Exodus xxxi, 13; hence by the sabbath the Jews were separated from the Gentiles. Hence Ovid:
And the seventh day’s rites kept by the Jew.
The fourth, that on the sabbath, from the labours of the whole week, rest might be given to servants, maidservants and animals, that they be not oppressed by too much labour. This cause is given here verse 14.
The symbolic cause is: because the number seven is mystical, which Holy Scripture much uses;
for it signifies the complete fulness of a thing, as the week of days is the continuous and perpetual revolution of the same; hence the sabbath was the seventh day: so the seventh year was of liberty and the sabbath of the land; seven weeks of days were Pentecost, seven weeks of years were the jubilee. Hence seven in Scripture signifies fulness, as is plain from 1 Kings ii, 5, in the Hebrew, Jeremias xv. Philo gives an arithmetical cause of this: seven is a virgin within ten, and neither begets nor is begotten, being without father and mother. Hence the Pythagoreans call it the virgin: therefore it befits God and divine things, and so its Greek name hebdomas was by the ancients called sebdomas, from sebasmos, that is, from worship and reverence. For so the Greek aspirate is often turned into the letter s, as Priscian testifies: as from hals is made sal; from hyper, super; from hys, sus; from hyle, sylva; from hemi, semis; from hex, sex; from hepta, septem; as from herpo, serpo.
St. Jerome gives a physical congruity in his Physics, Amos v: Galen, he says, teaches that the most burning fevers are resolved on the seventh day; if not on the first, on the second, that is the fourteenth day; if not on the second, on the third, that is the twenty-first day, so that all labours and troubles come to rest in the number seven.