those 'of
old time,' who loved it most.

'SWEAR NOT AT ALL'

'Again, ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time,
Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord
thine oaths: 34. But I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by
heaven; for it is God's throne: 35. Nor by the earth; for it is His
footstool; neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of the great
King. 36. Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst
not make one hair white or black. 37. But let your communication
be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of
evil.'--MATT. v. 33-37.

In His treatment of the sixth and seventh commandments, Jesus deepened
them by bringing the inner man of feeling and desire under their
control. In His treatment of the old commandments as to oaths, He
expands them by extending the prohibitions from one kind of oath to all
kinds. The movement in the former case is downwards and inwards; in the
latter it is outwards, the compass sweeping a wider circle. Perjury, a
false oath, was all that had been forbidden. He forbids all. We may note
that the forms of colloquial swearing, which our Lord specifies, are not
to be taken as an exhaustive enumeration of what is forbidden. They are
in the nature of a parenthesis, and the sentence runs on continuously
without them--'Swear not at all ... but let your communication be Yea,
yea; Nay, nay.' The reason appended is equally universal, for it
suggests the deep thought that 'whatsoever is more than these' that is
to say, any form of speech that seeks to strengthen a simple, grave
asseveration by such oaths as He has just quoted, 'cometh of evil'
inasmuch as it springs from, and reveals, the melancholy fact that his
bare word is not felt binding by a man, and is not accepted as
conclusive by others. If lies were not so common, oaths would be
needless. And oaths increase the evil from which they come, by
confirming the notion that there is no sin in a lie unless it is sworn
to.

The oaths specified are all colloquial, which were and are continually
and offensively mingled with common speech in the East. Nowhere are
there such habitual liars, and nowhere are there so many oaths. Every
traveller there knows that, and sees how true is Christ's filiation of
the custom of swearing from the custom of falsehood. But these poisonous
weeds of speech not only tended to degrade plain veracity