For the source text click/tap here: Sanhedrin 63
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As we learned in the Mishna (60b), while various types of idol worship are punishable by death, other interactions with idols are merely lavin – negative commandments – whose perpetrators are liable for lashes.
One example of the latter type is someone who uses the name of such a deity to take an oath or to fulfill an oath that was taken.
According to the Gemara on our daf the source for this law is the passage in Sefer Shemot (23:13) ve-shem elohim aḥerim lo tazkiru, lo yishama al pikhah – and the name of a foreign god you should not mention, it should not be heard on your mouth.
Rabbi Shimon ben Yoḥai to him: But isn’t anyone who links the name of Heaven and something else, a euphemism for an idol, uprooted from the world? As it is stated:
“He who sacrifices to the gods, save to the Lord only, shall be utterly destroyed” (Exodus 22:19). The fact that the Jewish people included God in their idolatrous statement could not have saved them from destruction.
We explore the idea of linking the divine with other deities or syncretism in antiquity.