There’s an important thing we need to keep in mind as we continue to study the rules of vow-making laid out for us in Numbers Chapter 30.
Vows and ordinances were just as common and valid in the New Testament era.
There is this insidious tendency, especially resident within the gentile mind, where the Torah is viewed with a condescending attitude that concludes these Mosaic Scriptures are not relevant for our day and age.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
In both the Gospels and the Epistles written by the Apostles, you will find that vow-making was a normal part of daily life.
And not only that, vows were generally considered to be an acceptable and good thing.
When Yeshua recommended that one should refrain from vow-making, he was essentially speaking against the following two things.
Casual vows made in the heat of the moment that are flippantly tossed aside later on…
…and…
…thinking that one could use a vow as an excuse to override one’s legal obligations as set down in Torah.
It is this latter point that is connected one of Yeshua’s more famous but I think often understood utterances in the New Testament.
Let’s take a look at it now.
“Yeshua replied,
“And why do you break the command of God
for the sake of your tradition?
For God said,
‘Honor your father and mother’ and
‘Anyone who curses their father or mother
is to be put to death.
But you say that if anyone declares that
what might have been used
to help their father or mother
is ‘devoted to God,’
they are not to ‘honor their father or mother’ with it.
Thus you nullify the word of God
for the sake of your tradition.
You hypocrites!
Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you:
“‘These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
They worship me in vain;
their teachings are merely human rules.”
-Matthew 15:3-9
In these verses from the Book of Matthew, Yeshua was calling out the evil practice of using a vow as an excuse to avoid taking care of their parents in their old age.
Apparently, that was a huge problem in those days.
Note the part where it says “what might have been used to help their father or mother is ‘devoted to God,’”.
“Devoting something to God” is referring to a vow here.
What’s going on here is that a person out of selfishness or pure lack of Scriptural understanding (probably both) is operating under the false idea that because he made a vow to give something to HASHEM it somehow supersedes his Torah-established responsibility to care for his parents.
In this specific case, since the money a son would have used to care for his parents has been vowed to God, the faulty reasoning is that not only has he done something better because he gave the money to the priesthood (which I bet they highly encouraged him to)…
…but he is somehow free from his obligation to have to care for this parents because “well, gosh darn I don’t have the money anymore because I did the the more “moral” thing by giving it to God”.
Yeshua’s response?
HELL NO! (That’s a paraphrase folks)
He called them out on their hypocrisy and self-serving doctrines saying their traditions were nothing but doctrines of men and NOT a reflection of what the Scriptures really said.
And let’s not think that Yeshua’s lambasts were just against the traditions of the Jews which is the interpretation the gentile church loves to take.
Nope, his statements are just as applicable today to all of the church traditions and manmade doctrines upon which Christianity is built on.
Yeshua says to accept manmade doctrines over Scripture is the very essence of having a heart that is far away from God.
Having said all that, the bottom line is that if a man makes a vow, he is to keep a vow, period.
That is why we should be extra careful before making any vows.
Interestingly, the way Numbers Chapter 30 is organized that we’re presented with four examples of vow-making and all of these examples do NOT deal with men making vows but women, because as I wrote about in my last post, the act of a woman making a vow was a whole other can of worms altogether.
To close, understand that Yeshua did not do away with any of the Torah commands concerning vow-making.
All he was saying is to just be darn careful and give due consideration BEFORE making a vow because once you do, you’re stuck with it.
And don’t think you’re vow-making can allow you to get out of obedience to the other commands or principles established in Torah such as “Honoring your mother and father“.
I’m done.
Leave a Reply