“…Him only shalt thou serve” (Matthew 4:10). Christians are not to divide their devotion time due to God alone with any other object or activity. The application of this commandment for the modern day Christians would be simply that Christians are not to place their faith in any other object or person other than the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. The commandment, therefore, would be “you must not make for yourself an idol.” Similarly, in the next verse, the core of the command would seem to have been “you must not bow down to them.” (Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries, Exodus, pp. The Israelites, however, lived in the midst of a polytheistic world thus the apodeictic commandments (short, sharp “you must not”) were a prohibition by God to His people that He would not share their worship with any other God. The children of God – Israel – were monotheistic, that is they worshipped one God. It may be that these images were in use among Israel’s ancestors (even Orthodox Jewish tradition allows that Terah, Abraham’s father, was an idol-maker). The condemnation of images clearly includes images that were idols. The actual Hebrew word for graven images means “carved image.” The Hebrew means something hacked or chisled into some “likeness.” These idols were normally of wood (though the word could cover stone carvings as well), usually with some precious metal covering. The presence of the invisible God was to be marked by no symbol of Himself, but by His words written on stone, preserved in the arc of the Holy of Holies and covered by the mercy seat. The first commandment therefore forbids the worship of any false god, seen or unseen, it is here forbidden to worship an image of any sort, whether the figure of a false deity or one in any way symbolical of Jehovah. Here, the theological truth is that the essence of God is spiritual and unseen (John 4:24). All Scripture is consistent in condemnation of the worship of any created thing in place of the Creator. The clarification as to what graven images really are does not forbid painting, sculpture, or other art forms as such, it does, however, forbid selling art as a point of contact for worship. God is spirit and cannot be represented by statues or any likeness. The commandment forbidding any graven image specifically demands that thou shalt not bow down thyself to them. There is no other God, and no false gods are to have place in our lives. The first commandment stresses God’s complete uniqueness. The main prohibition to graven images is found in the Ten Commandments as located in Exodus 20:4,5 and also Deuteronomy 5:8. The reference to graven images may be found in several locations throughout the Old and New Testaments. Eichrodt, Theology of the Old Testament, I (1961), 115-119.Old and New Testament Mentions of “Graven Images” Pedersen, Israel: Its Life and Culture, III, IV (1947) W. In the Temple, moreover, there were various figures on the walls, and the molten sea rested on twelve bronze oxen.īibliography J. 26) and the bronze serpent ( Num 21:8, 9). the two cherubim in the holy of holies ( Exod 25:18, 20) the floral ornamentation of the golden lampstand ( 25:34) the embroidered hangings of the sanctuary ( ch. Both the Tabernacle and the Temple contained many objects that required the arts of carving and engraving, e.g. In deciding this question, it must be kept in mind that certain figures were in fact made by God’s own command. There has been considerable discussion concerning whether or not all imitative art is forbidden by the second commandment. In spite of this, throughout their history ( Judg 17:3, 4 2 Kings 21:7 Isa 42:17), until the return from the Babylonian captivity, they often succumbed to the idolatrous ways of their neighbors. The Israelites were commanded by Moses to destroy all Canaanite forms of idolatry, including graven images ( Deut 7:5 12:3). All ancient peoples except the Israelites made graven images to represent the various gods. The second commandment in the Decalogue prohibits the making of such images in the form of anything seen in the heavens, on the earth, or in the sea. The Israelites were expressly forbidden to make any idolatrous representations of deity, whether graven ( Exod 20:4, 5 Deut 5:8) or molten ( Exod 32:4 34:17). The difference between a graven and a molten image was that the former was carved, and the latter was cast from molten metal. An image carved from wood, stone, or metal. GRAVEN IMAGE ( פֶּ֫סֶל, H7181, from the root meaning “to carve”).
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