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The "Name of God" meant much more than the mere breathing of an articulate word by which men spoke of Him. It meant God in His reality, in His immanence, in His eternity. To take His name in vain — that is, to no purpose — is to trifle with Omnipotence; it is to treat Him as though He were not. Thou takest His name in vain when thou triest to forget or ignore Him, to live without Him, more defiant than the very devils, to believe yet not to tremble. Observe, there is no menace here. It is the awful statement of an eternal fact. If by godlessness, and disobedience, and hypocrisy thou art taking God's name in vain, thou art guilty; and if responsible, thou must bear the consequences whatever they should be. Being guilty, how can He hold thee guiltless who seeth through all shams and is the very God of truth? But it is too sadly possible to make life itself one long act of taking God's name in vain. Take, by way of illustration, the great world of business with which so many of us are in one way or another connected. Is there a man whose work is scamped work? Is there a man who is engaged in the accursed branch of trade, which sells spirits to drunkards or savages, or the owning of low gin shops, or tenements unfit for human habitation and often let for immoral purposes, or anything which gravitates to the misery of mankind? Is there a man who sweats his workers, defrauds them of their wages, grinds the faces of the poor, excusing himself by custom, treating human beings as though they were mere chattels and implements of trade? Is there a man who has made large sums of money by plausible astute bargains, palmed off under the form of honourable agreement upon the unsophisticated ignorance of non-business men? Well, all such men spend their lives in taking God's name in vain, for they spend their whole lives in conditions which defy the fundamental laws of that Being whom they profess to serve. The Third Commandment is far more searching than this. A man may be utterly respectable, a woman may be perfectly moral, yet both of them guilty of this sin, and what one has called the great slugs of commonplace and cant may be leaving their slimy trails all over their lives. The human being who is rendering no single true and self-denying service to his fellow men, the life that ignores God's essential requirement that we should love our neighbour as ourselves, is a life that He will not hold guiltless — a life that takes His name in vain. Nor does it matter in the least if in the man or in the priest this selfishness turns into the form of some religionism. Not only is that religion no religion which, loving its party more than the Church, goes on to love the Church more than God, and ends by loving itself more than all. Surely then, in conclusion, this is an intensely searching commandment. If we examine it, every one of us may well be afraid lest we, in not any slight or venial manner, but most guiltily, take God's name in yam. Let us search ourselves with candles and see whether by profanity, falsity, malice, sloth, self-indulgence, lust, worldliness, greed, or merely nominal profession, we in our whole lives have hitherto been taking God's name in vain; let us seek forgiveness where alone it can be found.

(Dean Farrar.)

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KJV: Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain: for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.

WEB: "You shall not take the name of Yahweh your God in vain: for Yahweh will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.