This is the third in a 10-part series that focuses on the covenant law of Yah which was inscribed on tablets of stone at Mount Sinai. What do these laws really mean and how are we to keep them?
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We have probably heard the third commandment interpreted as an order to not use the Most High’s name as a curse word, and this is definitely something we should not do. Others lay interesting interpretations on this command as its fulfillment, ranging from committing wicked acts while proclaiming his name, to making oaths and promises while swearing by his name. These of course are things we are not to do either, but the meaning behind this commandment runs much deeper.
7 You shall not take the name of Yah your Elohim in vain; for Yah will not hold him guiltless that takes his name in vain.
—Exodus 20
First and foremost we have to realize that this verse has already been violated by the many Bible translations that have replaced the name of the Most High with an inferior title: “The LORD,” close to 7,000 times where it is mentioned. Many of the Prefaces to these translations openly admit to this. Here is a Preface to the 21st Century King James Version, just to give you an idea:
Also, we have strictly followed the KJV in the use of the “Hebrew unutterable name for the Supreme Being,” namely [and they cite the transliterated tetragrammaton] YHWH: the words LORD, GOD, and JEHOVAH in its various forms and combinations, have been retained exactly as they appear in the King James Version.
Now Psalm 68:4 in certain Bible translations clearly states what the name of the Most High is. In the King James Version, The Jubilees Bible 2000, The Darby Bible, the English Revised Version, Webster’s Bible Translation, and Young’s Literal Translation, among others, tell us that his name is Jah. Only the World English Bible clearly restores this to Yah, seeing that the letter “J” is relatively new. A Wikipedia article on the letter “J” says this:
The letter ‘J’ originated as a swash letter i, used for the letter ‘I’ at the end of Roman numerals when following another ‘I’, as in ‘xxiij’ instead of ‘xxiii’ for the Roman numeral representing 23. A distinctive usage emerged in Middle High German. Gian Giorgio Trissino (1478–1550) was the first to explicitly distinguish I and J as representing separate sounds, in his “Trissino’s epistle about the letters recently added in the Italian language” of 1524.
And a little farther down we read:
The first English language book to make a clear distinction between ⟨i⟩ and ⟨j⟩ was published in 1633.
So we can clearly see that even in Yeshua’s time, the letter “J” did not exist. So the names Jehovah, Jah, and Jesus could not have been the case either. While the pronunciation of the tetragrammaton (the four Hebrew letters that form the name of the Most High) is in dispute, there is little dispute about the pronunciation of the first part of the name, the YH, which is cleared up in Psalm 68:4 as “Yah.”
If we are told that that is his name in this verse, why argue any farther. The name is clearly seen in the names of prophets as well. EliYah (or Elijah) meaning “Yah is Elohim,” YirmeYah (or Jeremiah) meaning “Yah loosens,” and so many others. This is why we at Kingdom Preppers use the name Yah to refer to the Most High.
Now, that being said, the third commandment is obviously referring to a name and not a title being taken in vain, for we read:
7 You shall not take the name of Yah your Elohim in vain; for Yah will not hold him guiltless that takes his name in vain.
—Exodus 20
We shall take the name of Yah our Elohim in vain. And those who do so will not be considered without guilt. But let’s take a look at what the word vain means here.
The term “In vain” has it’s root in Hebrew word 7723 in the Strong’s Concordance, “shaw,” and carries the meaning “emptiness” and “vanity.” Surprisingly, this is the same term used in Exodus 23 verse 1:
1 You shall not raise a false report: put not your hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness.
—Exodus 23
In this verse, the word “false” in the term “false report,” is also Hebrew word 7723 in the Strong’s. So here we see that “shaw” is also used to convey falsehood. In other words, taking the name of Yah in vain can be termed as making the name of Yah “empty,” “vain,” or “false.” And what better way to do these three things than by replacing his name altogether with an inferior title?
Let us remember that these commandments were given to the children of Israel as part of a covenant agreement with Yah:
5 Now therefore, if you will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then you shall be a special treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine: 6 And you shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and a pure nation. These are the words which you shall speak unto the children of Israel.
—Exodus 19
As part of that covenant agreement, the third commandment orders us to not make his name empty, vain, or false. We are to keep his name pure on our lips. Psalm 135 supports the words of Exodus 19:
1 Praise you Yah. Praise you the name of Yah; praise him, O you servants of Yah. 2 You that stand in the house of Yah, in the courts of the house of our Elohim, 3 Praise Yah; for Yah is good: sing praises unto his name; for it is pleasant. 4 For Yah has chosen Jacob unto himself, and Israel for his peculiar treasure.
—Psalm 135
You see, it is the heathen around us who created these false names and titles to begin with. And when they conspired to wipe our name off the face of the earth and end us as a nation, our history was lost, and the name of our Creator and King was hidden and buried. The details of this plot are found in Psalm 83:
1 Keep not silence, O Elohim: hold not your peace, and be not still, O Elohim.
2 For, lo, your enemies make a tumult: and they that hate you have lifted up the head.
3 They have taken crafty counsel against your people, and consulted against your hidden ones.
4 They have said, Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation; that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance.
5 For they have consulted together with one consent: they make a covenant against you:
6 The tabernacles of Edom, and the Ishmaelites; of Moab, and the Hagrites;
7 Gebal, and Ammon, and Amalek; the Philistines with the inhabitants of Tyre; 8 Assyria also is joined with them: they have helped the children of Lot. Selah.
—Psalm 83
Since the heathen around us have conspired to do these things, and have also adopted these false names and titles, we are not to follow in these practices and customs, for we, the children of Israel, are commanded to not do so:
2 Thus says Yah, Learn not the way of the nations. . . .
—Jeremiah 10
15 And they rejected his statutes, and his covenant that he made with their fathers, and his testimonies which he testified against them; and they followed vanity, and became vain, and went after the heathen that were round about them, concerning whom Yah had charged them, that they should not do like them.
—2 Kings 17
The law clearly tells us that we are not to follow the nations, the heathen around us who have created these lies, and false names and images of our Creator and King. Since the days of slavery we have been indoctrinated by them and taught falsehoods. It is time to wake up to the truth and keep the covenant we agreed to at Mount Sinai.
Now some have cited Psalm 138 verse 2 to justify calling on any name we choose when praising Yah:
2 I will worship toward your pure temple, and praise your name for your lovingkindness and for your truth: for you have magnified your word above all your name.
—Psalm 138
Because the verse states “you have magnified your word above all your name,” this is understood as a license to use names and titles other than the original Hebrew ones our ancestors were told to use. But while it is true that we are to keep his magnified word near and dear in our hearts and minds and live by it, that same word commands us to not take his name in vain; to not make it empty and false:
7 You shall not take the name of Yah your Elohim in vain; for Yah will not hold him guiltless that takes his name in vain.
—Exodus 20
So yes, while his word is magnified above his name alone, we are commanded by that very word concerning his name. There is no getting around this in other words. So those who hold to Psalm 138 verse 2 should know that the verse includes the commandment found in Exodus 20 verse 7.
And furthermore, we are also commanded as follows:
13 And in all things that I have said unto you be circumspect: and make no mention of the name of other deities, neither let it be heard out of your mouth.
—Exodus 23
From the website paleotimes.org we read the following:
Baal is a Canaanite-Phoenician word that means “master” or “lord”. (Harper’s Bible Dictionary, Miller) There are many baalim (plural of baal) or lords with different names in the Scriptures. Baal worship was worship in high places where people brought taxes to the pagan deities. Baal-gad is pronounced “Ba’al Gawd” which means the lord of fortune and should be recognized as similar to “lord god”. (Josh. 11:17) Baal-hamon means the lord of riches.
(Song of Solomon 8:11) Other references can be found in II Samuel 13:23, I Chronicles 5:23, Joshua 15:9, II Samuel 5:20, II Kings 4:42-44, Judges 20:33, and Numbers 33:7. One of the most mentioned baalim is baal-peor which means lord of opening which was probably Chemosh, a Moabite deity.
https://paleotimes.org/is-there-any-evidence-that-baal-and-lord-are-equivalent-2/
And then several verses that refer to Ba’al worship by the Israelites are cited, and we see the punishment they received for worshiping Ba’al. The first of these verses is found in Numbers 25:
3 And Israel joined itself unto Baal of Peor: and the anger of Yah was kindled against Israel.
5 And Moses said unto the judges of Israel, Slay you every one his men that were joined unto Baal of Peor.
—Numbers 25
And then there’s Deuteronomy 4:
3 Your eyes have seen what Yah did because of Baalpeor: for all the men that followed Baalpeor, Yah your Elohim has destroyed them from among you.
—Deuteronomy 4
Pslam 106:
28 They joined themselves also unto Baalpeor, and ate the sacrifices to the dead.
—Psalm 106
And finally Hosea 9:
10 I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness; I saw your fathers as the firstfruits on the fig tree in its first season: but they went to Baalpeor, and separated themselves unto that shame; and they became abominations like the thing they loved.
—Hosea 9
Farther down in the article we read:
Lord and baal are interchangeable in meaning. Yah is not replaceable! There are a few prophecies that refer to the replacement that has happened. Let’s look at Jeremiah 23:
26 How long shall this be in the heart of the prophets that prophesy lies? yea, they are prophets of the deceit of their own heart; 27 Who think to cause my people to forget my name by their dreams which they tell every man to his neighbor, as their fathers have forgotten my name for Baal.
—Jeremiah 23
Our fathers have forgotten his name for the name of Baal. This, the verse tells us, is the fault of the prophets among us who operate according to the deceit of their own heart. And those prophets think to cause Yah’s people to forget his name. There are leaders, false shepherds among us today who continue to spread these lies.
16 For the leaders of this people cause them to err; and they that are led by them are destroyed.
—Isaiah 9
Why are we destroyed? Because we allow people to lead us away from truth, thus we lose the true knowledge of Yah and his laws.
6 My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because you have rejected knowledge, I will also reject you, that you shall be no priest to me: because you have forgotten the law of your Elohim, I will also forget your children.
—Hosea 4
It is important that we keep Yah’s laws exactly as he commanded them to be kept. If he tells us not to make his name empty, vain, and false, then that means we are not to do so with our lips, or through our praise, or even by our faith by believing lies regarding that name, and teaching others to do so.
For . . .
7 You shall not take the name of Yah your Elohim in vain; for Yah will not hold him guiltless that takes his name in vain.
—Exodus 20
Keywords: baal, false names, name in vain, YHWH,image of the beast, name of the beast, Yah, Yahuah, Yahuwah, Yahowah, Yahushua, Yeshua, The covenant law, keep the commandments, 10 commandments
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