God punishes you, or he backs away, or he learns to not listen to you anymore in boy cries wolf type situation? Its really not clear what the repercussions are.
No, no, it was originally "Taking God's name in vein," as saying the name of God out loud would allow Him into your blood. If you say the name of God, you allow him to inhabit your blood, gain your power, and become even more mighty. The ancient Hebrews feared God gaining too much power, as He would be able to destroy the world. Then Christians figured out that if they took Communion and instead drank the blood of Christ, they could reverse the Hebrew God's power and slowly increase their own until they could ascend to the heavens and do battle with the Almighty, empowered by His blood in their veins, rather than weakened by taking His name in vein. In this seventeen-part essay, I will describe how we can defeat God by
The bible is a collection of thousands of years of oral history and societal laws put to paper generations after the fact, allegory and letters to random fuckers and varying accounts of a Jewish cult leader who was executed for crimes against the state. It's gonna have a potted narrative.
But seriously. I thought this might be another Tower of Babylon incident. I could definitely see this playing out early on during the vestiges of the mythological era. I was also feeling asleep.
I think the idea was that he could be invoked by his name, but they couldn't have people going around saying "Jehova" (or whatever) randomly without any cool powers happening, so they made up the rule to discourage people poking holes in their flimsy story.
The expression comes from the phrase "in vain" which restores the original meaning of the noun vain away from the conceited meaning and more towards the vacuous sense. So if you're taking God's name in vain, it's using God's name needlessly.