The power of oaths

Senators? Are you listening?

Some of us watching yesterday’s solemn ceremony of U.S. senators signing their names to the vaunted oath book came away a little disappointed.

Because of the seriousness of an impeachment (The former president’s second! This time for inciting an insurrection! A record-breaker, a personal best for the most flawed man ever to hold the office!), senators were asked to sign their names into a book as a promise they will be impartial jurors during the coming trial.

(Forty-five minutes after signing their names, 45 of those senators then cast votes questioning the constitutionality of the trial, which makes one wonder what means “impartial,” but whatevs, Mary.)

Those of us weaned on Bible stories and the importance of keeping one’s vows kept waiting to see if senators who might be considered co-conspirators in the Jan. 6th armed insurrection (Looking at you, Josh Hawley, and you, Ted Cruz) might burst into flames as they affixed their name to the book. Or maybe they would fall down in a trance. Or speak in tongues. Or something.

Sadly, nothing like that happened. The senators — even Hawley, Missouri’s Own Disappointment™ — simply bent to sign the book, and then they walked away without so much as a whiff of sulphur about them.

By the time Lindsey Graham signed, I would have settled on the book, itself, bursting into flames.

Sadly, that didn’t happen, either.

Including books in ceremonies that involve oaths (court rooms, political swearing-ins, and the like) stretches back to the ninth century, according to this New Yorker magazine piece:

By placing a hand on the book…the oath-taker is acknowledging that, should he lie under oath, neither the words in the Bible nor his good deeds nor his prayers will bring him any earthly or spiritual profit.

Flames are better (and generally quicker than a financial downfall), but again, whatevs, Mary.

Vows are serious business in the Bible. In one story from the Hebrew scriptures, a man going into battle promises God that if he is victorious, he will sacrifice to God whatever comes out of his door to greet him when he gets home.

Perhaps you can see where this is going.

He wins the battle, goes home, and is met by his beloved daughter, who greets him dancing, with a tambourine. The daughter — who might have been named Seila or Iphis — is informed of her father’s oath, accepts her fate, and is allowed to go to the mountains to mourn her virginity (she is unmarried) for two months. When she comes home, her father sacrifices her, his promise to God intact.*

I know! Right?

Technically? Christians aren’t supposed to make oaths. Their word — minus the oath — is supposed to be sufficient.

In the Senate, the impeachment trial should begin Feb. 9. I’ll be watching, and though it is not Christ-like, I’m rooting for fire raining down on the parties who deserve it. At the least, I’ll settle for a sacrificial virgin. If it comes to that, I nominate Sen. Hawley.

Please add me to your prayer list.

*There are some interpretations of the story that say the father did not, in fact, kill his daughter, but I like my religion scary. Selah.