Adjuration

An adjuration is a solemn appeal in which one person imposes on another the obligation of performing some act or stating the truth under the sanction of an oath or curse. In biblical usage, adjurations call on the authority of God or of a sworn covenant to bind the one addressed. Saul's rash adjuration forbidding his troops to eat food during battle (1 Samuel 14:24) resulted in a violation by his own son Jonathan, who had not heard the command. Joshua's adjuration at Jericho (Joshua 6:26) cursed anyone who would rebuild the city's walls, a curse later fulfilled in 1 Kings 16:34.

In the New Testament, the high priest's adjuration of Jesus — I adjure thee by the living God that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ (Matthew 26:63) — represents the formal use of the oath formula in a judicial context. At Ephesus, certain itinerant Jewish exorcists attempted an adjuration invoking Jesus's name without personal faith in him, with disastrous results (Acts 19:13). The practice appears across both testaments as a recognized legal and religious mechanism for demanding truthful testimony or binding compliance.