Almost everyone thinks the third commandment is about language. Watch your mouth. Do not use God's name as a curse word. Dr. Carmen Joy Imes, Associate Professor of Old Testament at Biola University's Talbot School of Theology, takes us back to the Hebrew of Exodus 20:7 and shows that the command was never about how you say God's name. The verb was never "take." It was "carry." And that single word reopens the entire meaning of Sinai.

Drawing on the research behind her book Bearing God's Name, Dr. Imes traces what it actually meant for Israel to be stamped with God's name and sent out as His representatives. We get into the high priest who wore the names of the twelve tribes on his body, the invisible tattoo that marked a people as God's own, the ancient practice of branding slaves, and the moment God sealed His name onto Israel. From there the conversation moves through the exile, into the Gospels, and lands on what it means for anyone who claims the name of Christ today.

In this episode you will learn:

- Why "take the Lord's name in vain" is a mistranslation and what the Hebrew actually says

- How the verb "carry" or "bear" changes the meaning of the entire command

- Why the high priest wore the names of the twelve tribes on his shoulders and chest

- What it meant for Israel to be branded with God's name like an invisible tattoo

- The ancient link between tattoos, slavery, and belonging to a master

- How this one command reframes all Ten Commandments

- Why the exile became a crisis for God's reputation among the nations

- How Jesus embodies Israel's mission and bears the name perfectly

- What it means for the church to carry God's name well, or in vain, today

About the Guest:

Dr. Carmen Joy Imes is Associate Professor of Old Testament at Biola University's Talbot School of Theology (PhD, Wheaton College). She is currently writing a commentary on Exodus for Baker Academic.

Her books include:

• Bearing God's Name: Why Sinai Still Matters
• Bearing YHWH's Name at Sinai (the academic edition of her dissertation)
• Being God's Image: Why Creation Still Matters
• Becoming God's Family: Why the Church Still Matters

Her books are available on Amazon and through InterVarsity Press.

Website: carmenjoyimes.com

YouTube: Carmen Joy Imes (home of Torah Tuesday and her weekly teaching)

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Open the Old Testament and you run into a problem nobody warns you about. Israel is supposed to worship one God. Yet the text keeps naming others. Baal. Asherah. The gods of the nations. So where did they all go, and when did Israel actually land on one God alone?

Old Testament scholar Dr. Matthew Lynch of Regent College joins the Dig In Podcast to take that question apart. The standard scholarly story says monotheism showed up late, forged in the wreckage of the Babylonian exile. Dr. Lynch says that timeline is wrong, and he found the evidence hiding in a rare Hebrew word the prophet Isaiah used to humiliate the gods of the nations. What follows is a conversation about how the Bible does the work of lifting one God above every rival power, both the seen and the unseen.

In this episode you will learn:

• The real difference between monotheism, monolatry, henotheism, and polytheism, and why those distinctions change how you read the Old Testament
• Why the Hebrew word Elohim is far wider than most readers realize, covering angels, the dead, and the God of Israel himself
• The standard scholarly account of how Israel slowly arrived at one God, and exactly where Dr. Lynch believes it falls apart
• The rare term in Isaiah used to strip the gods of their dignity, a word that appears almost nowhere else in the entire Old Testament
• How Genesis 1, the Psalms, and Ezekiel each silence rival gods in completely different ways
• Why the prophets aimed their fire not just at other gods, but at the empires of Assyria, Egypt, and Babylon
• What the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten reveals about whether Israel actually invented monotheism
• How the unrivaled uniqueness of Israel's God sets the stage for everything the New Testament claims about Christ

Guest: Dr. Matthew Lynch

Associate Professor of Old Testament at Regent College, Vancouver, and co-founder and co-host of the OnScript podcast. His books include First Isaiah and the Disappearance of the Gods, Flood and Fury: Old Testament Violence and the Shalom of God, Portraying Violence in the Hebrew Bible, and Monotheism and Institutions in the Book of Chronicles, all available on Amazon.

Connect with Dr. Lynch: https://www.regent-college.edu/faculty/lynch-matthew

First Isaiah and the Disappearance of the Gods (Critical Studies in the Hebrew Bible Book 12)- https://a.co/d/0fZgv5hS

Stay Connected:
johnnyova.com
https://www.youtube.com/@thejohnnyova
The Revelation Reset on Amazon: https://a.co/d/hiUkW8H

Most people open the Old Testament and see 39 disconnected books. Dr. Carol Kaminski sees one story. A Cambridge-trained Old Testament scholar and the creator of the CASKET EMPTY framework, she has spent three decades helping the church read Scripture the way it was meant to be read, as one connected account of God's plan of redemption running from creation all the way to Chronicles.

In this conversation she takes apart the assumption that Noah was chosen because he was good, traces grace as the engine driving the entire Old Testament, and lands on a discovery hiding in the Hebrew of 2 Samuel 7 that points straight to the resurrection. From the call of Abraham to the rise and fall of the kings to the exile and the return, she shows how every period of Israel's history is moving toward a single center.

In this episode you will learn:

• Why the books of the Old Testament are not in chronological order, and how that one fact changes the way you read your Bible
• What the CASKET acronym means and the six periods that hold the whole Old Testament together
• Why Noah was not chosen for his righteousness, and what that says about grace
• How the golden calf story exposes the true character of the God of the Old Testament
• Why the singular word "seed" in God's promise to Abraham points directly to Christ
• The Hebrew word in the Davidic covenant that the Greek translates as resurrection
• Why Chronicles closes the Old Testament by retelling the entire story from the beginning
• How to finally read the Old Testament as one unified narrative instead of scattered verses

Dr. Carol Kaminski is Senior Professor of Old Testament at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (Ph.D., University of Cambridge) and the founder of Casket Empty. Her work includes the CASKET EMPTY Old Testament Timeline, Study Guide, Bible Study, and Maps, along with From Noah to Israel, Was Noah Good?, and her commentary on 1-2 Chronicles in Zondervan's Story of God Commentary series.

Explore the CASKET EMPTY series and resources: https://www.casketempty.com

Stay Connected:
Johnnyova.com
https://www.youtube.com/@thejohnnyova
The Revelation Reset: https://a.co/d/hiUkW8H