PIERCED THE NAME — the startling verb behind 'blasphemed' (24:11). Naqav ordinarily means 'to pierce, bore through' and, by extension, 'to specify precisely, to name outright' (the same root gives Hebrew its word for a dot or point). The offender's crime was not vague irreverence; the text's own verb says he spoke the divine Name itself, aloud, as a curse. This is very likely the seed of a far later practice: rabbinic Judaism's refusal to pronounce YHVH at all, substituting HaShem, 'the Name' — the identical word this verse already uses in place of pronouncing it. A euphemism the tradition would later build into law may already be modeled in this chapter's own choice of words. → first discussed at Lev 24:11