The OED Online gives the following as the third entry under "help, v."
c. In
subj. pres., in invocations and oaths: esp. in
so help me God, the customary formula in a solemn oath; and in
God help him (them, etc.)
, often a parenthetical exclamation of pity for the helpless condition of the person spoken of. Also ellipt.
so help me, and as a variant
so help me bob.
"help," then, would be, as the OED says, present subjunctive, hence no agreement. The subject verb inversion would, I think, be due to the initial adverb "so." We get such inversion regularly with negative adverbs, as in "Never had I seen one before," but
it feels a bit archaic with "so," and I think it is archaic. What's odd is that the SVI also moves the subject "God" beyond the object "me." I don't have an explanation for that.
Herb
Herbert F. W. Stahlke, Ph.D.
Emeritus Professor of English
Ball State University
Muncie, IN 47306 [log in to unmask]
Starting with FDR, presidents have appended "so help me(,) God" to the end of the inaugural oath. Can someone parse the phrase for me? When people say, "So help me!" they mean something like "I swear to God" or "May God punish me if I am not telling the
truth." They don't seem to mean a supplicative "May God help me."
I would be grateful for an informed analysis of how the actual words signify the phrase's meaning.
Dick
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