Several years ago, I remember meeting a very sincere woman who told me she couldn’t ever get married because she had made a rash vow when she was a kid that she would never get married.
Unfortunately (or fortunately, I guess?), since then she had met an awesome guy whom she, in fact, did want to marry. But still, she had a conscience issue in the way: Should she marry or not?
I don’t remember what I told her, but I do know that she eventually found a (much) older guy than me who gave her some good advice, and ended up marrying the guy she was dating. Evidently, her conscience issue was removed, and she had no qualms about walking down the aisle. They’ve been married for over a decade now with four kids.
But that makes us wonder: Is it wrong to make vows?
On the one hand, absolutely not. Marriage itself is a vow, so saying that getting married is sinning, which we obviously know is not.
On the other hand, you have passages like Matthew 5:33-37 that have Jesus expressly forbidding them. What do we do with that?
As with most of the items in the Sermon on the Mount, it needs to be understood that Jesus’ words here were as much a reaction to the attitudes of the audience as it was blanket statements about life. Jewish customs of the day were to have various degrees of vows—such as by the Temple, by Jerusalem, etc. As the object escalated in importance, so did the vow.
God never intended that to be the case, most obviously because if they broke their vow, there were absolutely no repercussions. That’s why Jesus says that no man can make a single hair “white or black” (Matthew 5:36).
But the other reason was that He intended God’s people to simply keep their words, period. Instead of saying “oh you can really trust me now because I swear it by the Temple!,” a Christian should be able to say something and be trusted based on their reputation alone.
Make those yays yays and those nays nays, in other words.
Moreover, it seems like the passage here in Deuteronomy 23 talks about vows made to secure favor from God, which are not necessarily wrong in and of themselves (Psalm 50:1-14). If we don’t pay them, though, that’s tantamount to theft. God has held up His end, but we have not. At the least, it’s disrespectful to God.
In these verses, though, Moses makes a case for something better: Not vowing at all.
Prayers to God should be enough. Our obedience and trust in His care should be enough. Asking God for special favors doesn’t seem to be wrong, but withholding what is due absolutely was. In this, Moses (and Jesus) sought to spare us the trouble.