Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Exodus 20:4
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness [of any thing] that [is] in heaven above, or that [is] in the earth beneath, or that [is] in the water under the earth:
4. a graven image ] an image of carved wood (sometimes enclosed in a metal casing, Isa 30:22) or stone, such as were common in antiquity, and are so, of course, still among heathen nations. Cf. Deu 4:16 f.
the likeness of any form, &c.] By an inexactness of language, the Heb. identifies the ‘form’ made with the ‘form’ (in heaven, &c.) upon which it is modelled: RV. eases the sentence by inserting ‘the likeness of.’
in heaven above ] as birds (Deu 4:17).
heaven above the earth beneath ] The same combination (with reference to Jehovah being God in both), Deu 4:39, Jos 2:11, 1Ki 8:23 (both Deuteronomic).
the water under the earth ] cf. Deu 4:18. The waters meant are the huge abyss of subterranean waters, on which the Hebrews imagined the flat surface of the earth to rest (Gen 49:25, Psa 24:2; Psa 136:6), and which they supposed to be the hidden source of seas and springs (see further the writer’s note on Gen 1:9-10). Fish, at least in certain places, or of certain kinds, were regarded as sacred, and forbidden to be eaten, in Egypt, Syria and elsewhere; and Xen. ( Anab. i. 4. 9) says that the fish in the Chalus, near Aleppo, were looked upon as gods. See Rel. Sem. 2 [175] pp. 174 6, 292 f.; EB. ii. 1530 f.
[175] W. R. Smith, The Religion of the Semites, ed. 2, 1894.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
4 6. The second commandment, against image-worship. The prohibition is general; and includes both images of Jehovah, who, as a spiritual Being, cannot be represented by any material likeness (see the development of this thought in Deu 4:15-19), and also those of other gods, or of deified creatures, or objects of nature. Images were widely used by worshippers of Jehovah till the times of the prophets: on the bearing of this upon the date of the Decalogue, see p. 415 f.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Exo 20:4-6
Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them.
The law of worship
I. A revelation of the will of God.
1. What is forbidden is not the culture of the plastic arts, but their abuse in furnishing symbols for purposes of devotion. Statuary is lawful, and painting is lawful; but sculptor and artist are alike restricted from attempting to represent the Deity; and all men are prohibited from taking such representations as objects of worship.
2. There was a special reason for this prohibition as it affected the Hebrews. They had come away from Egypt–a country where the employment of beasts and images in religious symbolism had descended to the very nadir of human degradation. They were on their way to Canaan, a land given to them because its inhabitants had outraged all forbearance by the filthy and bloody rites of Baal and Astarte. Above all, the chief reason of their own election as the chosen nation was that they might become faithful witnesses of Jehovah.
3. The bearing of this law upon Christian duty is manifest. Material images are forbidden, but mental images may be framed, provided always that they be fashioned out of the Divine manifestations. Every historic act, in which God is seen by the individual or the community, is a revelation of God; and the sum of such revelations gives a mental image of the Divine Being which we can and may adore. Furthermore, the focus of all Gods self-revelation is the Lord Jesus Christ.
II. A revelation of the character of God.
1. God is jealous for the truth of His own nature. How could any graven image ever be an accurate or an adequate similitude of the infinite invisible Spirit?
2. God is jealous for the character of His people. By the act of homage men acknowledge themselves inferior to that which they adore; so that every degradation of the Object of worship involves a simultaneous abasement of the worshipper.
3. God is jealous for the influence of His people upon the world. Israel was appointed to be a guardian of truth, an apostle of the one God, a harbour-light for benighted nations upon the sea of time. It was peculiarly wounding to the King of Heaven that they should insult Him by representing Him as a calf of gold, and should degrade themselves by their debasing homage.
III. A revelation of the providence of God.
1. Hereditary penalties follow the breach of this law of spiritual worship. Sensuous worship leads to sensuous living; and the fruits of sensuous living may linger on in miseries untold which our children shall suffer when we who did the wrong lie forgotten in the grave.
2. On the other hand, hereditary blessings follow the keeping of this law. True spiritual life begets true spiritual life, and hands on a heritage of reward to succeeding generations.
3. And it is the fittest which survives the longest! Evil is for a time; good is for eternity. (W. J. Woods, B. A.)
The Second Commandment
I. The Divine prohibition.
1. Observe precisely what this second commandment forbids.
(1) And, first, negatively: It does not forbid all use of art in worship. For Jehovah Himself commanded Moses to adorn the tabernacle with figures of cherubim, and trees, and flowers, and pomegranates, and bells, and all manner of cunning workmanship. The imaging faculty, or faculty of making images–imagination in the primary sense of the term–is itself a Divine endowment, and must therefore be cultivated.
(2) What, then, does the second commandment forbid? It forbids all idolatrous representations of Deity (see Joh 4:24). We must worship God according to His nature; His nature is spiritual, and, therefore, we must worship Him spiritually–spirit-wise, not image-wise; for only what is spiritual in us can worship what is spiritual above us.
2. The prohibition, then, of the second commandment is a universal need.
(1) The Jew at the foot of Mount Sinai needed it. He had just emerged from idolatrous Egypt–that Egypt which was wholly given over to image-worship.
(2) Modern Christianity needs it. We need not go to the Roman Catholic Church for examples of image-worship. Behold our own Protestant Ecclesiolatry, or worship of the Church as an institution, bowing down before her ordinances as though they were ends instead of using them as means, worshipping her sacraments and creeds and traditions and ceremonies. Behold our Protestant Bibliolatry, or rabbinic worship of the Bible as a letter and even sacrament, These, and such as these, are, practically speaking, more or less revered as symbols of Deity.
II. The Divine reason for the prohibition.
1. Jehovah our God is a jealous God.
2. Law of heredity (see Gal 6:7).
(1) The merciless aspect of heredity. Everybody knows that there are hereditary diseases; for instance, leprosy, scrofula, consumption, insanity, and a nameless disease far more dreadful. And as there are hereditary diseases, so there are hereditary vices; for example, indolence, mendacity, avarice, intemperance, crime. Moral habit is as hereditable as bodily gait. As Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes has somewhere stated: A man is an omnibus, in which all his ancestors are seated. Yes; the soul, not less than the body, has its physiology. This law it is which accounts for the sad fact of the universal sinfulness. But you interrupt me with an objection. This law of heredity, you tell me, tends to quench personal responsibility. Learn, then, I answer, a lesson from the analogy of the human body: although confessedly propagated, it is also confessedly a separate, independent individuality. Again: it is of the utmost importance in this discussion to keep clearly and steadily in mind the distinction between personal guilt and inherited disaster, or, as the philosophers phrase it, unfortunate environment. But I hear another objection: This law of heredity, you tell me, is unjust and cruel; it makes the innocent suffer for the guilty. How, then, will you reconcile the awful working of this law of heredity with the character of a holy and loving God? Answer: Man is mortal. How, then, shall the continuance of the race on earth be secured? I can conceive of but two ways. First, by the continuous creation of men, or a perpetual repetition of the miracle of Eden, the ceaseless bringing into the world, fresh from the Makers hand, of a succession of created Adams, or parentless Melchizedeks. But under such a condition of things there would be, in all probability, a repetition of Adams painful story. Secondly, the continuance of the race on earth can be secured in the way in which the Creator does actually secure it–namely, by the law of propagation. Heredity it is which renders this profound fact–Society–possible. There is such a thing as man-kind, because there is such a thing as men-kinned. It is almost impossible to overestimate the value of consanguinity as a curbing, uplifting, unifying force. Heredity! Why it is my real hope under God for humanity.
(2) Merciful aspect of heredity. This law is a real inspiration for foreign missions. Special pains must be taken to save the heathen children; for converted children are, according to Gods own law, the mighty hope of our worlds future. Lessons:
1. Heredity the key to social regeneration. Men, not less than animals, can be improved by stirpiculture, or selective breeding.
2. A summons to personal heroism. God judges us, not by our capacities, but by our efforts.
3. Worship the Divine Man Himself. He is the Image of the Invisible God, and we need no other. (G. D. Boardman.)
Idolatry
I. The nature of idolatry. A giving to something below God of that worship which is due to God alone. It may be outward, or inward; an act of the body, or an act of the mind.
II. The evil of idolatry.
1. It has a strange power to perpetuate and increase itself.
2. It ever engenders falsehood and deceit.
3. It is almost always accompanied with cruelty.
The dark places of the earth, says Scripture, are full of the habitations of cruelty, and all experience confirms the saying. Think of Mexico, as she was when first discovered, and of her fearful hecatombs of slaughtered men. Think of our country, and of other countries around it, in Druidical times. Follow Captain Cook in his voyages from island to island in the great Pacific. Wherever we find idols we find bloodshed, bloodshed for those idols. As for idolatrous Rome, I will not speak of her wholesale slaughters in years gone by.
4. There is one point more which I wished to notice, it is the licentiousness that accompanies idolatry, arising, beyond doubt, in part out of it. English minds cannot conceive the extent of this, nor the nature of it.
III. There is another thing, far more fearful than the idolatry of Rome, and far more difficult to keep ourselves from–the idolatry of the mind and heart. We may have idols within us, and, as for worshipping them, it may be the main business of our lives. (C. Bradley. M. A.)
Image-worship
To set up an image to represent God is a debasing of the Deity, it is below God. If one should make images of snakes or spiders, saying he did it to represent his prince, would not the prince take this in high disdain? What greater disparagement to God, than to represent the infinite God by that which is finite,–the living God, by that which is without life, and the Maker of all, by a thing which is made?
1. To make a true image of God is impossible. What is invisible cannot be portrayed.
2. To worship God by an image is both absurd and unlawful.
(1) It is absurd and irrational; for, the workman is better than the work: he who hath builded the house hath more honour than the house. If the workman be better than the work, and none bow to the workman, how absurd then is it to bow to the work of his hands! Is it not an absurd thing to bow down to the kings picture, when the king himself is present? more so to bow down to an image of God, when God Himself is everywhere present.
(2) It is unlawful to worship God by an image; for it is against the homily of the Church; the images of God, our Saviour, the Virgin Mary, are of all others the most dangerous; therefore the greatest care ought to be had that they stand not in temples and churches.
Use: Take heed of idolatry, namely, image-worship.
(1) Get good principles, that you may be able to oppose the gainsayer.
(2) Get love to God.
(3) Pray God to keep you. (T. Watson.)
The Second Commandment, and its influence upon the Jews
Some go so far as to say that it forbad the Jew to make any carved work at all. Certainly, judging by national results, it would almost seem as if Israel had so understood it. The Jews are a people famous for many things, for intellectual and administrative ability, and for a marvellous power of sustaining themselves in the midst of the most difficult circumstances. But whilst there have been Jewish warriors and poets, statesmen and financiers, musicians and singers of world-wide reputation, where are their artists and architects? The very temple of Solomon was a Phoenician structure. You may count easily a half-dozen distinguished musical Jewish composers–Mozart, Beethoven, Meyerbeer, Mendelssohn, and Rossini–but where is the distinguished Jewish sculptor or painter? Still, whilst all this is very suggestive as to the formative influence of the commandment, it seems most reasonable to decide that the sentence, Thou shalt not make, is qualified by the sentence, Thou shalt not bow down nor worship. The Jews were really only forbidden to make carved images as symbols of Deity, as objects of adoration. (W. Senior, B. A.)
The offence of symbolism
It becomes obvious that an imaged representation of the Invisible One must involve dishonour. Before the Infinite One can be bodied forth He must first of necessity be sensualized. Here is the deep insult. And the guilt of irreverance clings to the human mind in the very fact that it thinks itself capable of such an impossibility, and fails to perceive how it befouls what it touches. What difference then is there between the image of the artist and an intellectual conception of God? None in reality. What is the image? It is more than the carving of the sculptor; it is first his thought. The image is really thought embodied. Words may be used instead of marble, or wood, or colours, but essentially they are the same if they present to the imagination a shape, a form, or an intellectual conception. In this sense words are as finite as images or symbols, and therefore may be as guilty of degradation. Thus it follows that the reason of man has no more right to touch the Invisible Creator than the hands. God refuses also to be the subject of the human intellect. That the human mind should think itself capable of compassing the Infinite is to insult Him with deepest irreverence. Who by searching can find out God? God Himself must instruct us how to conceive of Him, and by what faculties of our nature we must draw near to Him. And this He has done. Through Abraham and through Moses, through David and the prophets, and, including all and perfecting all, through Jesus Christ the Divine Son, He has made Himself known to man. (W. Senior, B. A.)
A Jealous God.
I.
II. The Lord is jealous of His sovereignty. He that made heaven and earth has a right to rule His creatures as He wills.
1. This reminds us of the Lords hatred of sin. Every time we sin, we do as much as say, I do not acknowledge God to be my Sovereign; I will do as I please.
2. Surely if sin attacks the sovereignty of God, self-righteousness is equally guilty of treason: for as sin boasts, I will not keep Gods law, self-righteousness exclaims, I will not be saved in Gods way; I will make a new road to heaven.
III. The Lord is jealous of His glory. Gods glory is the result of His nature and acts.
1. How, careful, then, should we be when we do anything for God, and God is pleased to accept of our doings, that we never congratulate ourselves. The worms which ate Herod when he gave not God the glory are ready for another meal; beware of vain glory!
2. How careful ought we to be to walk humbly before the Lord. The moment we glorify ourselves, since there is room for one glory only in the universe, we set ourselves up as rivals to the Most High.
3. Let us see to it that we never misrepresent God, so as to rob Him of His honour. If any minister shall preach of God so as to dishonour Him, God will be jealous against that man.
IV. In the highest sense, the Lord is jealous over His own people.
1. The Lord Jesus Christ, of whom I now speak, is very jealous of your love, O believer.
2. He is very jealous of your trust. He will not permit you to trust in an arm of flesh.
3. He is also very jealous of our company. It were well if a Christian could see nothing but Christ. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The jealousy of God
Jealousy is but the anger and pain of injured and insulted love. When God resents the illegitimate transfer to material symbols of the devotion inspired by His own acts, it is not because His greatness suffers any diminution or because His authority is impaired. It is His love which is wounded. He cannot endure to lose any of the affection, trust, or reverence by which He has stirred our souls. One of the fairest-looking falsehoods by which men excuse themselves for living a life in which God has no place, is the plea that the infinite God cannot care for the love and reverence of such creatures as we are. When will men understand that no father can ever be great enough to be indifferent to the affection, the obedience, and the confidence of his children? (R. W. Dale, D. D.)
Visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children.–
Visiting the sins of the fathers on the children
I. That the denunciation and sentence relate to the sin of idolatry in particular, if not to that alone.
II. That it relates to temporal, or, more properly speaking, to family prosperity and adversity.
III. That it relates to the Jewish economy, in that particular administration of a visible providence under which they lived.
IV. That at no rate does it affect (or was ever meant to affect) the acceptance or salvation of individuals in a future life. (Archdeacon Paley.)
The children bearing the fathers iniquities
I. As to the matter of fact–that God does visit on the children the iniquities of the fathers–the evidence is so broad and conclusive that, without a singular carelessness it cannot be overlooked. The sin of one man brought death into the world, and caused that, throughout the vast spreadings of humanity, wretchedness, both physical and moral, shall hold a kind of undisputed supremacy.
II. Whether such a visitation consists with the principles of justice and equity. In most mens minds, when this question is proposed, there is a feeling that the visitation is not thus consistent: we think it a righteous procedure that every man should bear his own burden; but we see no equity in the appointment that the innocent should suffer for the fault of the guilty. It is, however, worthy of observation, that the proceeding after all cannot be repugnant to our notions of justice, since its exact parallel occurs in human legislation. If the statute-book of the country enact the visiting on children the sin of the father, it will be hard to show that the visitation is counter to common sense and equity. In cases of treason, we all know that it is not the traitor alone who is punished: his estates are confiscated, his honours destroyed; so that, in place of transmitting rank and affluence to his son, he transmits him nothing but shame and beggary. We do not say that the thing must be just because enacted by human laws; we only say that there can be no felt and acknowledged contradiction between the proceeding and the principles of equity, since human laws involve the children in the doom of the parent. If you can show the child to be innocent, and therefore to deserve nothing of what it receives, you will have made good your point that the visitation is unjust; but to maintain the thorough innocence of the child would be to maintain the purity of human nature. Still, you will say, the child is confessedly worse off than it would have been had the parent not sinned; and though we may deserve all we endure for ourselves, we still practically suffer for the misdoings of another. We admit this; but at the same time we contend that you are shifting the argument. If the child endured no more than it has deserved you admit that the course of justice is unimpeached–and this is the main thing we are anxious to establish: but, if after conceding the strict justice of the measure, you profess to think it hard that the child should endure what, but for the parents offence, it would not have deserved, we are ready to follow you into the new field of debate, and to show you, as we think, the erroneousness of your opinion. The child, for example, is of a diseased constitution, of a dishonoured name, of a broken fortune; these constitute the visitation of whose hardship you complain; but who can prove to us that the child is really injured by the visitation? Nay, who can prove to us that the child is not really advantaged? If we were told that, because the parent died in unrighteousness, the child also must be shipwrecked for eternity, the wrought injury would be tremendous and overwhelming: but there is not the least ground for supposing that the threatened visitation extends to the next world; on the contrary, the whole tenor of Scripture–inasmuch as salvation is offered to all–requires us to believe, that the consequences to the children of the fathers transgressions lie confined within our present sphere of being. Why then is it certain that the child is dealt with injuriously, if sentenced for the parents iniquity to penury and affliction? Are penury and affliction never overruled for good? Is it necessarily an evil to have been born poor in place of rich–to be of weak health instead of strong–to struggle with adversity, in place of being lapped in prosperity? No man who feels himself immortal, who is conscious that this confined theatre of existence is but the school in which he is trained for a wider and nobler still, will contend for the necessary injuriousness of want and calamity: and yet unless this necessary injuriousness is supposed, it cannot be proved that the children who are visited for the fathers iniquity are on the whole worse off than they would have been had there been no visitation. Thus the argument against the goodness of the Almighty as much falls to the ground as that against His justice; for proceeding on the principle that physical evil is never subservient to moral good, we overthrow our position by assuming what we know to be false. (H. Melvill, B. D.)
Inherited character
An old man died a few years ago in the Massachusetts State Prison. He was seventy-six years old, and had spent the last eight years of his life in a cell in that gloomy gaol. His wife for years had been a prisoner there too, and so had his daughter, and seven of his sons. Were not the iniquities of the father visited upon the children? In that same State, seventy years ago, a good minister died, who for forty-one years had been a beloved pastor over the same church. He was the fourteenth eldest son of that same name and family who had been a preacher of the gospel. Since his death, one hundred of his descendants have been Christians, and eight of his sons and grandsons have also been ministers. Through that blessed family, for many long years, the Great Father of love has been showing mercy to thousands in them that love Him and keep His commandments.
Showing mercy unto thousands.–
The place of mercy in the government of God
Look carefully at a very important feature of the appeal which is not brought out clearly in our English translation. He visits iniquity unto the third and fourth, and shows mercy unto the thousandth, the commandment reads. Our translators have supplied the word generation in italics to the first numeral, and evidently they were right in doing so, but they should have supplied for the same reasons the same word to the second numeral: He visits iniquity unto the third and fourth generation, He shows mercy unto the thousandth generation. The third and fourth show an indefinite number, the thousandth is also an indefinite number, but it is a much larger number. The principle of the Divine government has a very decided leaning to the side of mercy. Now, perhaps you will say: I see that this feature of the Divine government works with absolute impartiality, with strict justice, but I can see no indication of its leaning to the side of mercy. Then look again, and more closely, at the race and the individual.
1. Look at the individual first. A child inherits an impaired constitution. Two features of the Divine government respond at once. First, the restorative forces within the child, the recuperative powers of mans nature; and second, the restorative forces without, the whole realm of remedies and skill awakened in others in their application. The child of ignorant parents is ignorant. Two features here also are on the side of mercy. The innate thirst of the mind for knowledge, present though weak in the child; and the intelligence of the community in which the child lives, the atmosphere of enlightenment which he must breathe while he lives. The child of irreligious parents is irreligious. Here, too, there are two principles on the side of mercy. However corrupt he may be, there is something in the soul of the child at unrest for God which may be touched into power; and the surrounding Christianity–the Christ who has loved and died to save–lives in many believing hearts through whom He seeks to save the child.
2. Now, concerning the race, it may be said that the limit of degradation seems to be fixed, but the limit of progress cannot be even imagined. How far man will advance in the control and use of the powers of nature, we who witness to-day the stupendous achievements of Christian civilization will not even dare to conjecture. And how far man will be lifted up, in the knowledge and fellowship of God, the Bible tells us that we cannot even imagine. In the whole race, also, the two principles we have seen working in individuals on the side of mercy exist. However corrupted in idolatry men may become, however great the ascendancy of the flesh over the spirit in man, the spirit still exists, and in its very nature cannot be satisfied until it finds and lays hold upon the living God. There is something within men that cannot be satisfied with idolatry, or with sensual corruption, something that may be touched into strong and glorious life. And there is something to touch it. God makes the appeal of His infinite love in Jesus Christ, who has at infinite cost taken away sin and brought in new life to all who receive Him. And we who receive Him, as He lives in us, will touch all the dark souls we can reach with His light and life. We have received from our fathers the elevation and happiness of our Christian land. Let us cherish and transmit to our children the glorious inheritance, and let us send the light into the whole earth. Let us, receiving forgiveness and new life in our Saviour, bring our whole being into a shape worthy of God in moral likeness. (F. S. Schenck.)
Gods mercies
I. What are the qualifications?
1. The spring of mercy which God shows is free and spontaneous. Say not then, I am unworthy; for mercy is free. If God should show mercy only to such as deserve it, He must show mercy to none at all.
2. The mercy God shows is powerful. How powerful is that mercy which softens a heart of stone! Of what sovereign power and efficacy is that mercy which subdues the pride and enmity of the heart, and beats off those chains of sin in which the soul is held!
3. The mercy which God shows is superabundant; abundant in goodness, keeping mercy for thousands. The vial of Gods wrath doth but drop; but the fountain of His mercy runs.
4. The mercy God shows is abiding (Psa 103:17).
II. How many ways is God said to show mercy?
1. We are all living monuments of Gods mercy. He shows mercy to us in daily supplying us.
2. God shows mercy in lengthening out our gospel liberties.
3. God shows mercy in preventing many evils from invading us.
4. God shows mercy in delivering us.
5. God shows mercy in restraining us from sin; lusts within, are worse than lions without.
6. God shows mercy in guiding and directing us.
7. God shows mercy in correcting us. God is angry in love; He smites that He may save. Every cross to a child of God is like Pauls cross wind, which though it broke the ship, it brought Paul to shore upon the broken pieces.
8. God shows mercy in pardoning us; who is a God like Thee, That pardonest iniquity? It is mercy to feed us, rich mercy to pardon us.
9. God shows His mercy in sanctifying us (Lev 20:8). This prepares for happiness, as the seed prepares for harvest.
10. God shows mercy in hearing our prayers. God may sometimes delay an answer, when He will not deny. You do not presently throw a musician money, because you love to hear his music: God loves the music of prayer, therefore doth not presently let us hear from Him, but in due season He will give an answer of peace.
11. God shows mercy in saving us: according to His mercy He saved us. This is the top-stone of mercy, and it is laid in heaven. Now mercy displays itself in all its orient colours; now mercy is mercy indeed, when God shall perfectly refine us from all the lees and dregs of corruption. As an argument against despair: see what a great encouragement here is to serve God,–He shows mercy to thousands.
(1) Hope in Gods mercies, the Lord takes pleasure in them that fear Him, and hope in His mercy.
(2) If God shows mercy to thousands, labour to know that His mercy is for you, He is the God of my mercy. A man that was ready to drown saw a rainbow; said he, What am I the better, though God will not drown the world, if I drown? so, what are we the better God is merciful, if we perish? Let us labour to know Gods special mercy is for us. (T. Watson.)
Them that love Me
I. How must our love to God be qualified?
1. Love to God must be pure and genuine; He must be loved chiefly for Himself. We must love God, not only for His benefits, but for those intrinsic excellencies wherewith He is crowned; we must love God not only for the good which flows from Him, but the good which is in Him.
2. Love to God must be with all the heart, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart. We must not love God a little,–give God a drop or two of our love,–but the main stream of our love must run after Him; the mind must think of God, the will choose Him, the affections pant after Him.
3. Love to God must be flaming; to love coldly is all one as not to love.
II. How may we know whether we love God?
1. He that loves God desires His sweet presence; lovers cannot be long asunder, they have their fainting fits, they want a sight of the object of their love. A soul deeply in love with God desires the enjoyment of Him in His ordinances, in word, prayer, sacraments.
2. He who loves God doth not love sin; ye that love the Lord hate evil. The love of God and the love of sin can no more mix together than iron and clay; every sin loved strikes at the being of God, but he who loves God hath an antipathy against sin.
3. He who loves God is not much in love with anything else; his love is very cool to worldly things; his love to God moves as the sun in the firmament, swiftly; his love to the world moves as the sun on the dial, very slow.
4. He who loves God cannot live without Him.
5. He who loves God will be at any pains to get Him. Doth he love his friend that will not make a journey to see him?
6. He that loves God prefers Him before estate and life. Before estate: For whom I have suffered the loss of all things. Who that loves a rich jewel would not part with a flower for it? Before life: They loved not their lives to the death. Love to God carries the soul above the love of life and the fear of death.
7. He who loves God loves His favourites, namely, the saints (1Jn 5:1).
8. If we love God, as we cannot but be fearful of dishonouring Him (the more a child loves his father, the more he is afraid to displease him), so we weep and mourn when we have offended Him.
III. What are the incentives to provoke and inflame our love to God?
1. Gods benefits bestowed on us. Great is the love that is excited by love. Kindness works on a brute; the ox knows his owner.
2. Love to God would make duties of religion facile and pleasant.
3. It is advantageous (1Co 2:9).
4. By our loving God we may know that He loves us (1Jn 4:19). If the ice melts, it is because the sun has shined upon it; if the frozen heart melts in love, it is because the Sun of Righteousness hath shined upon it.
IV. What means may be used to excite our love to God?
1. Labour to know God aright.
2. Make the Scriptures familiar to you.
3. Meditate much of God, and this will be a means to love Him; while I was musing, the fire burned. Meditation is the bellows of the affections. Who can meditate on Gods love? who can tread on these hot coals, and his heart not burn in love to God? (T. Watson.)
And keep My commandments
Love and obedience, like two sisters, must go hand in hand. A good Christian is like the sun, which doth not only send forth light, but goes its circuit round the world: so he hath not only the light of knowledge, but goes his circuit too, and moves in the sphere of obedience. In what manner must we keep Gods commandments?
1. Our keeping the commandments must be fiducial. Our obedience to Gods commandments must spring from faith; therefore it is called the obedience of faith.
2. Our keeping the commandments must be uniform. We must make conscience of one commandment as well as another; then shall I not be ashamed, when I have respect to all Thy commandments. Physicians have a rule, when the body sweats in one part, but is cold in another, it is a sign of a distemper: so when men seem zealous in some duties of religion, but are cold and frozen in others, it is a sign of hypocrisy. We must have respect to all Gods commandments.
3. Our keeping Gods commandments must be willing; if ye be willing and obedient. A musician is not commended for playing long, but for playing well; it is obeying God willingly is accepted; the Lord hates that which is forced, it is rather paying a tax than an offering. If a willing mind be wanting, there wants that flower which should perfume our obedience, and make it a sweet smelling savour to God. That we may keep Gods commandments willingly, let these things be well weighed. Our willingness is more esteemed than our service; therefore David counsels Solomon not only to serve God, but with a willing mind. The will makes sin to be worse, and makes duty to be better. To obey willingly shows we do it with love; and this crowns all our services. There is that in the Lawgiver, which may make us willing to obey the commandments, namely, Gods indulgence to us.
There is that in Gods commandments which may make us willing; they are not burdensome.
1. For a Christian, so far as he is regenerate, consents to Gods commands–I consent to the law that it is good.
2. Gods commandments are sweetened with joy and peace. Cicero questions whether that can properly be called a burden which one carries with delight and pleasure. If a man carries a bag of money given him, it is heavy, but the delight takes off the burden; when God gives inward joy, that makes the commandments delightful.
3. Gods commandments are advantageous.
(1) Preventive of evil. Had He not set them as a hedge or bar in our way, we might have run to hell, and never stopped.
(2) Nothing in them but what is for our good. Not so much our duty as our privilege.
4. Gods commandments are ornamental. It is an honour to be employed in a kings service.
5. The commands of God are infinitely better than the commands of sin, these are intolerable. Many have gone with more pains to hell than others have to heaven. This may make us obey the commandments willingly.
6. Willingness in obedience makes us resemble the angels. Use: It reproves them who live in a wilful breach of Gods commandments,–in malice, uncleanness, intemperance,–they walk antipodes to the commandment.
To live in a wilful breach of the commandment is–
1. Against reason.
2. Against equity.
3. Against nature.
4. Against kindness. (T. Watson.)
Keeping the commandments
I. One condition, then, of obtaining Gods mercy is obedience. But what am I to obey? But I desire to ask whether, at heart, some of you do not:know sufficiently the answer that should be given? Can you say that you know no difference between right and wrong? Is the liar and the man of truth the same to you? May we go together, then, thus far, that we admit the difference between right and wrong? A second step will, I think, be then admitted–to right and wrong we must add the words ought and ought not. In other words, the distinction between right and wrong brings with it the words ought, ought not, responsibility, duty. Here it may be well further remind you that in this word duty lies hid an inexplicable treasure of infinite value–I mean our freedom. In the I ought is practically included the I can. But let me ask you, yet again, whence comes this power to distinguish right from wrong? Here we may differ in words, but in the existence of the power itself many will agree. We may call it moral feeling, moral sense, Divine reason, or use the word to which we have been accustomed–conscience. But, once more, why do we give to this mysterious power so much importance? Why, if this moral feeling, this conscience, is part of ourselves, why not deal with it as we please, and listen or not as it may serve our turn? The real answer, I believe (though all may not be able to give it), is because conscience does not speak as for herself, but as for another. She brings us to a bar of another, whom we fear and may resist, but One higher than ourselves, even God. Here is surely a point worthy of your most careful consideration. II, The text offers mercy for thousands, mercy for all, but on two conditions–obedience and love. Obedience of a kind we may practise to the moral law; but love requires personality. We must, by Gods help, rise above the contemplation of the law to the Person of the Lawgiver, and love the law for His sake–Lord, what love have I unto Thy law!–and then love Him because He is what He is.
1. The first test I would suggest to you is this–what use do you make of your Bible? The step from obedience to love, we said, implied the step from an impersonal law to the personal Lawgiver, and this, the belief in one Personal God, we said, required for its fulness the aid of Divine revelation. Here, then, is one test–our Bible. Let me say it as plainly as I can: if you neglect the study, the habitual devotional study, of the one Book that above all others makes known to you the one Personal God, you will be in danger of living a mere moral life–fulfilling, in a sense, the condition of obedience, but falling short of the higher condition of love, and a narrow, selfish, unloving, uninfluential humanity will be the result.
2. Let me offer you another test which each can easily make for himself. What is your relation to prayer? Prayer is the test of belief in a Personal God. The man who never prays, never rises above himself, may be moral, may be obedient to the moral law, but he has lost one proof of his belief in a Personal Lawgiver, to whom the law was intended to lead him; has lost one proof that he has a Personal Guide through the perils of his life; has lost one proof that he is preserving the condition of love. If we can pray, we have faith in a Personal God; we may deplore our coldness from time to time, we may even pray from a sense of duty many times, but we have not lost the great condition of love, and we know by experience how our hearts may become again as the rivers in the south–dry water-beds for a season, but in due time flowing like a flood.
3. Let me give you but one more test, by which you may know whether you are fulfilling this condition of love, the great condition on which Gods plentiful mercy may be obtained. It is the test of the love of our neighbour. (Bp. E. King.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
THE SECOND COMMANDMENT
Against making and worshipping images.
Verse 4. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image] As the word pasal signifies to hew, carve, grave, c., pesel may here signify any kind of image, either of wood, stone, or metal, on which the axe, the chisel, or the graving tool has been employed. This commandment includes in its prohibitions every species of idolatry known to have been practised among the Egyptians. The reader will see this the more plainly by consulting the notes on the ten plagues, particularly those on chap. xii.
Or any likeness, c.] To know the full spirit and extent of this commandment, this place must be collated with De 4:15, &c.: Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves-lest ye corrupt yourselves – and make you a graven image, the similitude of any figure, the likeness of MALE or FEMALE. All who have even the slightest acquaintance with the ancient history of Egypt, know that Osiris and his wife Isis were supreme divinities among that people.
The likeness of any beast. – behemah, such as the ox and the heifer. Among the Egyptians the ox was not only sacred but adored, because they supposed that in one of these animals Osiris took up his residence: hence they always had a living ox, which they supposed to be the habitation of this deity and they imagined that on the death of one he entered into the body of another, and so on successively. This famous ox-god they called Apis and Mnevis.
The likeness of any winged fowl. – The ibis, or stork, or crane, and hawk, may be here intended, for all these were objects of Egyptian idolatry.
The likeness of any thing that CREEPETH. The crocodile, serpents, the scarabeus or beetle, were all objects of their adoration and Mr. Bryant has rendered it very probable that even the frog itself was a sacred animal, as from its inflation it was emblematic of the prophetic influence, for they supposed that the god inflated or distended the body of the person by whom he gave oracular answers.
The likeness of any FISH. – All fish were esteemed sacred animals among the Egyptians. One called Oxurunchus had, according to Strabo, lib. xvii., a temple, and divine honours paid to it. Another fish, called Phagrus, was worshipped at Syene, according to Clemens Alexandrinus in his Cohortatio. And the Lepidotus and eel were objects of their adoration, as we find from Herodotus, lib. ii., cap. 72. In short, oxen, heifers, sheep, goats, lions, dogs, monkeys, and cats; the ibis, the crane, and the hawk; the crocodile, serpents, frogs, flies, and the scarabeus or beetle; the Nile and its fish; the sun, moon, planets, and stars; fire, light, air, darkness, and night, were all objects of Egyptian idolatry, and all included in this very circumstantial prohibition as detailed in Deuteronomy, and very forcibly in the general terms of the text: Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in the HEAVENS above, or that is in the EARTH beneath, or that is in the WATER under the earth. And the reason of this becomes self-evident, when the various objects of Egyptian idolatry are considered.
To countenance its image worship, the Roman Catholic Church has left the whole of this second commandment out of the decalogue, and thus lost one whole commandment out of the ten; but to keep up the number they have divided the tenth into two. This is totally contrary to the faith of God’s elect and to the acknowledgment of that truth which is according to godliness. The verse is found in every MS. of the Hebrew Pentateuch that has ever yet been discovered. It is in all the ancient versions, Samaritan, Chaldee, Syriac, Septuagint, Vulgate, Coptic, and Arabic; also in the Persian, and in all modern versions. There is not one word of the whole verse wanting in the many hundreds of MSS. collected by Kennicott and De Rossi. This corruption of the word of God by the Roman Catholic Church stamps it, as a false and heretical Church, with the deepest brand of ever-during infamy!
This commandment also prohibits every species of external idolatry, as the first does all idolatry that may be called internal or mental. All false worship may be considered of this kind, together with all image worship, and all other superstitious rites and ceremonies. See Clarke on Ex 20:23.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Thou shalt not make, either in thy mind, or with thy hand, Act 17:29, or by thy command.
Unto thee, i.e. for thy use, or for thee to worship; for otherwise they were not absolutely forbidden to make any images, but only to make them for worship, as may appear by comparing this place with Lev 19:4; Deu 4:15 and Amo 5:26, with Act 7:43; and from Lev 26:1, where the setting up of a pillar, or stone, is as absolutely forbidden as the making of an image. And therefore as the former is not forbidden to be done simply and universally, as appears from Jos 24:20; 1Sa 7:12, but only to be done in order to worship, so also is the latter. Moreover there were cherubims and other images in the temple, and afterwards the brazen serpent, which because they were not made to be worshipped, neither were indeed, nor were ever esteemed to be, any contradictions to this law.
Any graven image, or molten, or any other image, as is most evident from the nature and reason of the precept. Nor is any thing more common than such synecdochical expressions, wherein under one kind named all other things of the like nature are contained. But for more abundant caution, and to put all out of doubt, he adds a more general word, nor any likeness.
Anything that is in heaven; as of God, Deu 4:15; Isa 44:9,20, angels, sun, moon, or stars, which the heathens worshipped, Deu 4:19; 17:3. Or in the earth; as of men, and beasts, and creeping things, which the Egyptians and other Gentiles worshipped as gods. See Deu 4:16,17; Isa 44:13; Eze 23:14.
Or in the water; as of fishes, such as Dagon was; or serpents, crocodiles, and such other Egyptian deities.
Under the earth: this is emphatically added, to note the singular care of Divine Providence in bringing the waters under the earth, which naturally are lighter and higher than it, and therefore might easily overwhelm it. Compare Psa 104:6.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
4, 5. Thou shalt not make . . . anygraven image . . . thou shalt not bow down thyself to themthatis, “make in order to bow.” Under the auspices of Moseshimself, figures of cherubim, brazen serpents, oxen, and many otherthings in the earth beneath, were made and never condemned. The meremaking was no sinit was the making with the intent to giveidolatrous worship.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image,…. An image of anything graven by art or man’s device, cut out of wood of stone, and so anything that was molten, or cast into a mould or form, engraved by men, and this in order to be worshipped; for otherwise images of things might be made for other uses and purposes, as the cherubim over the mercy seat, and the brazen serpent, and images and impressions on coin, which we do not find the Jews themselves scrupled to make use of in Christ’s time on that account; though they vehemently opposed the setting up any images of the Caesars or emperors in their temple, because they seemed to be placed there as deities, and had a show of religious worship: however, any image of God was not to be made at all, since no similitude was ever seen of him, or any likeness could be conceived; and it must be a gross piece of ignorance, madness, and impudence, to pretend to make one, and great impiety to make it in order to be the object of religious worship; on which account, not any image or the image of anything whatever was to be made:
or any likeness [of anything] that is in heaven above; any form, figure, portrait, or picture of anything or creature whatever, whether in the supreme, starry, or airy heaven; as of angels, which some have gone into the worship of; and of the sun, moon, and stars, the host of heaven; and of any of the birds of the air, as the hawk by the Egyptians, and the dove by the Assyrians:
or that is in the earth beneath; as oxen, sheep, goats, cats, dogs, c. such as were the gods of Egypt:
or that is in the water under the earth: as of fishes, such as were the crocodile of Egypt, the Dagon of the Philistines, and the Derceto of the Syrians: this is the second command, as the Targum of Jonathan expressly calls it that is, the first part of it, which forbids the making of graven images for worship; the other part follows, which is the worship of them itself: Clemens of Alexandria d observes, that Numa, king of the Romans, took this from Moses, and forbid the Romans to make any image of God, like to man or beast.
d Stromat. l. 1. p. 304.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
The Second Word. – To the prohibition of idolatrous worship there is linked on, as a second word, the prohibition of the worship of images. “After declaring in the first commandment who was the true God, He commanded that He alone should be worshipped; and now He defines what is His lawful worship” ( Calvin). “ Thou shalt not make to thyself a likeness and any form of that which is in heaven above, ” etc. is construed with a double accusative, so that the literal rendering would be “make, as a likeness and any form, that which is in heaven,” etc. , from to carve wood or stone, is a figure made of wood or stone, and is used in Jdg 17:3. for a figure representing Jehovah, and in other places for figures of heathen deities – of Asherah, for example, in 2Ki 21:7. does not signify an image made by man, but a form which is seen by him (Num 12:8; Deu 4:12, Deu 4:15.; Job 4:16; Psa 17:15). In Deu 5:8 (cf. Exo 4:16) we find “likeness of any form:” so that in this passage also is to be taken as in apposition to , and the as vav explic.: “and indeed any form,” viz., of Jehovah, not of heathen gods. That the words should be so understood, is demanded by Deu 4:15., where Moses lays stress upon the command, not to make to themselves an image ( ) in the form of any sculpture ( ), and gives this as the reason: “For ye saw no form in the day when Jehovah spake to you at Horeb.” This authoritative exposition of the divine prohibition on the part of Moses himself proves undeniably, that and are to be understood as referring to symbolical representations of Jehovah. And the words which follow also receive their authoritative exposition from Deu 4:17 and Deu 4:18. By “ that which is in heaven ” we are to understand the birds, not the angels, or at the most, according to Deu 4:19, the stars as well; by “ that which is in earth, ” the cattle, reptiles, and the larger or smaller animals; and by “ that which is in the water, ” fishes and water animals. “ Under the earth ” is appended to the “water,” to express in a pictorial manner the idea of its being lower than the solid ground (cf. Deu 4:18). It is not only evident from the context that the allusion is not to the making of images generally, but to the construction of figures of God as objects of religious reverence or worship, but this is expressly stated in Exo 20:5; so that even Calvin observes, that “there is no necessity to refute what some have foolishly imagined, that sculpture and painting of every kind are condemned here.” With the same aptness he has just before observed, that “although Moses only speaks of idols, there is no doubt that by implication he condemns all the forms of false worship, which men have invented for themselves.”
Exo 20:5-6 “ Thou shalt not pray to them and serve them.” (On the form with the o-sound under the guttural, see Ewald, 251d.). signifies bending before God in prayer, and invoking His name; , worship by means of sacrifice and religious ceremonies. The suffixes and – ( to them, and them) refer to the things in heaven, etc., which are made into pesel, symbols of Jehovah, as being the principal object of the previous clause, and not to , although is applied in Psa 97:7 and 2Ki 17:41 to a rude idolatrous worship, which identifies the image as the symbol of deity with the deity itself, Still less do they refer to in Exo 20:3.
The threat and promise, which follow in Exo 20:5 and Exo 20:6, relate to the first two commandments, and not to the second alone; because both of them, although forbidding two forms of idolatry, viz., idolo-latry and ikono-latry, are combined in a higher unity, by the fact, that whenever Jehovah, the God who cannot be copied because He reveals His spiritual nature in no visible form, is worshipped under some visible image, the glory of the invisible God is changed, or Jehovah changed into a different God from what He really is. Through either form of idolatry, therefore, Israel would break its covenant with Jehovah. For this reason God enforces the two commandments with the solemn declaration: “I, Jehovah thy God, am a jealous God;” i.e., not only , a zealous avenger of sinners, but , a jealous God, who will not transfer to another the honour that is due to Himself (Isa 42:8; Isa 48:11), nor tolerate the worship of any other god (Exo 34:14), but who directs the warmth of His anger against those who hate Him (Deu 6:15), with the same energy with which the warmth of His love (Son 8:6) embraces those who love Him, except that love in the form of grace reaches much further than wrath. The sin of the fathers He visits (punishes) on the children to the third and fourth generation. third (sc., children) are not grandchildren, but great-grandchildren, and the fourth generation. On the other hand He shows mercy to the thousandths, i.e., to the thousandth generation (cf. Deu 7:9, where stands for ). The cardinal number is used here for the ordinal, for which there was no special form in the case of . The words and , in which the punishment and grace are traced to their ultimate foundation, are of great importance to a correct understanding of this utterance of God. The before does not take up the genitive with again, as Knobel supposes, for no such use of can be established from Gen 7:11; Gen 16:3; Gen 14:18; Gen 41:12, or in fact in any way whatever. In this instance signifies “at” or “in relation to;” and , from its very position, cannot refer to the fathers alone, but to the fathers and children to the third and fourth generation. If it referred to the fathers alone, it would necessarily stand after . is to be taken in the same way. God punishes the sin of the fathers in the children to the third and fourth generation in relation to those who hate Him, and shows mercy to the thousandth generation in relation to those who love Him. The human race is a living organism, in which not only sin and wickedness are transmitted, but evil as the curse of the sin and the punishment of the wickedness. As children receive their nature from their parents, or those who beget them, so they have also to bear and atone for their fathers’ guilt. This truth forced itself upon the minds even of thoughtful heathen from their own varied experience (cf. Aeschyl. Sept. 744; Eurip. according to Plutarch de sera num. vind. 12, 21; Cicero de nat. deorum 3, 38; and Baumgarten-Crusius, bibl. Theol. p. 208). Yet there is no fate in the divine government of the world, no irresistible necessity in the continuous results of good and evil; but there reigns in the world a righteous and gracious God, who not only restrains the course of His penal judgments, as soon as the sinner is brought to reflection by the punishment and hearkens to the voice of God, but who also forgives the sin and iniquity of those who love Him, keeping mercy to the thousandth generation (Exo 34:7). The words neither affirm that sinning fathers remain unpunished, nor that the sins of fathers are punished in the children and grandchildren without any fault of their own: they simply say nothing about whether and how the fathers themselves are punished; and, in order to show the dreadful severity of the penal righteousness of God, give prominence to the fact, that punishment is not omitted-that even when, in the long-suffering of God, it is deferred, it is not therefore neglected, but that the children have to bear the sins of their fathers, whenever, for example (as naturally follows from the connection of children with their fathers, and, as Onkelos has added in his paraphrase of the words), “the children fill up the sins of their fathers,” so that the descendants suffer punishment for both their own and their forefathers’ misdeeds (Lev 26:39; Isa 65:7; Amo 7:17; Jer 16:11.; Dan 9:16). But when, on the other hand, the hating ceases, when the children forsake their fathers’ evil ways, the warmth of the divine wrath is turned into the warmth of love, and God becomes (“showing mercy”) to them; and this mercy endures not only to the third and fourth generation, but to the thousandth generation, though only in relation to those who love God, and manifest this love by keeping His commandments. “If God continues for a long time His visitation of sin, He continues to all eternity His manifestation of mercy, and we cannot have a better proof of this than in the history of Israel itself” ( Schultz).
(Note: On the visitation of the sins of the fathers upon the children, see also Hengstenberg, Dissertations, vol. ii. p. 446ff.)
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
Verses 4-6:
This “Word” is not a prohibition of the art of sculpture or painting. This is evident in the construction of the Tabernacle, which included both statues and embroidery work depicting angels. This “Word” forbids the worship of God under any material form. In the ancient world, the images of the gods were reverenced.
There was a special rite in Greece in which the gods were induced into their statues.
“Graven” pesel, applies to molten as well as graven images, perhaps because both were finished with graving tools, see Isa 40:19; 44:10; Jer 10:14.
“Jealous” qanna, “Jealous;” not of success or greatness, but jealous of His own honor. He will not permit the honor which is His due, to be given to others, animate or inanimate, see Jos 24:19.
The latter clause of v. 5 does not teach that God arbitrarily places the guilt of parents’ sins upon the children to the fourth generation. Neither does it teach that children are not responsible’ for their sins. Ezek. chapter 18 affirms that each person is responsible for his own sins. What this clause does teach is: the sins of parents affect the lives of their children to the fourth generation. A parent sows the seed of immorality in his life, and contacts a venereal disease, which may be transmitted to the children. Or, a parent has a bitter spirit; the children grow up in an atmosphere of bitterness, and learn to partake of it.
The law of genetics applies in this instance. The full extent of this law is not known today. However, research has established that a parent who is a drug-abuser or who is a drunkard may pass on a genetic trait that shows up in his children as a weakness for drugs or alcohol.
This principle does not mean that one may say, “I am not responsible for my drunkenness, because my father was a drunk,” and absolve himself from quilt. It is possible for one to break the chain of immorality or rebellion, by turning to the Lord and applying His principles in life.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
4. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image. In the First Commandment, after He had taught who was the true God, He commanded that He alone should e worshipped; and now He defines what is His Legitimate Worship. Now, since these are two distinct things, we conclude that the commandments are also distinct, in which different things are treated of. The former indeed precedes in order, viz., that believers are to be contented with one God; but it would not be sufficient for us to be instructed to worship him alone, unless we also knew the manner in which He would be worshipped. The sum is, that the worship of God must be spiritual, in order that it may correspond with His nature. For although Moses only speaks of idolatry, yet there is no doubt but that by synecdoche, as in all the rest of the Law, he condemns all fictitious services which men in their ingenuity have invented. For hence have arisen the carnal mixtures whereby God’s worship has been profaned, that they estimate Him according to their own reason, and thus in a manner metamorphose Him. It is necessary, then, to remember what God is, lest we should form any gross or earthly ideas respecting Him. The words simply express that it is wrong (79) for men to seek the presence of God in any visible image, because He cannot be represented to our eyes. The command that they should not make any likeness, either of any thing which is in heaven, or in the earth, or in the waters under the earth, is derived from the evil custom which had everywhere prevailed; for, since superstition is never uniform, but is drawn aside in various directions, some thought that God was represented under the form of fishes, others under that of birds, others in that of brutes; and history especially recounts by what shameless delusions Egypt was led astray. And hence too the vanity of men is declared, since, whithersoever they turn their eyes, they everywhere lay hold of the materials of error, notwithstanding that God’s glory shines on every side, and whatever is seen above or below, invites us to the true God.
Since, therefore, men are thus deluded, so as to frame for themselves the materials of error from all things they behold, Moses now elevates them above the whole fabric and elements of the world; for by the things that are “in heaven above,” he designates not only the birds, but the sun, and the moon, and all the stars also; as will soon be seen. He declares, then, that a true image of God is not to be found in all the world; and hence that His glory is defiled, and His truth corrupted by the lie, whenever He is set before our eyes in a visible form. Now we must remark, that there are two parts in the Commandment — the first forbids the erection of a graven image, or any likeness; the second prohibits the transferring of the worship which God claims for Himself alone, to any of these phantoms or delusive shows. Therefore, to devise any image of God, is in itself impious; because by this corruption His Majesty is adulterated, and He is figured to be other than He is. There is no need of refuting the foolish fancy of some, that all sculptures and pictures are here condemned by Moses, for he had no other object than to rescue God’s glory from all the imaginations which tend to corrupt it. And assuredly it is a most gross indecency to make God like a stock or a stone. Some expound the words, “Thou shalt not make to thyself a graven image, which thou mayest adore;” (80) as if it were allowable to make a visible image of God, provided it be not adored; but the expositions which will follow will easily refute their error. Meanwhile, I do not deny that these things are to be taken connectedly, since superstitious worship is hardly ever separated from the preceding error; for as soon as any one has permitted himself to devise an image of God, he immediately falls into false worship. And surely whosoever reverently and soberly feels and thinks about God Himself, is far from this absurdity; nor does any desire or presumption to metamorphose God ever creep in, except when coarse and carnal imaginations occupy our minds. Hence it comes to pass, that those, who frame for themselves gods of corruptible materials, superstitiously adore the work of their own hands. I will then readily allow these two things, which are inseparable, to be joined together; only let us recollect that God is insulted, not only when His worship is transferred to idols, but when we try to represent Him by any outward similitude.
(79) “ C’est une folie et perversite.” — Fr.
(80) “All such images, or likenesses, are forbidden by this commandment, as are made to be adored and served; according to that which immediately follows, thou shalt not adore them nor serve them. That is, all such as are designed for idols or image-gods, or are worshipped with divine honor. But otherwise, images, pictures or representations, even in the house of God, and in the very sanctuary, so far from being forbidden, are expressly authorized by the Word of God. See Exo 25:15; Num 21:8; 1Ch 28:18; 2Ch 3:10.” — Note to Douay Version. Dublin, 1825; by authority.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.Exo. 20:4-6
THE SECOND COMMANDMENT
The Being and Spirituality of God seem to be among the most simple ideas of which the human mind is susceptible; and yet they have been perverted or entirely obliterated by the corruption of our nature. The Being of God is almost universally admitted. But the Spirituality of His essence has never entered into the conceptions of mankind under the dominion of sense. The deities of the heathen were all localoften in the form of deified heroesit was therefore natural that they were made to assume a shape. Even the Israelites were guilty of this unholy worship.
I. Offer some general observations upon idolatry.
1. In the origin of idolatry we may find a lesson for our guidance with regard to the misuse of things in themselves lawful, and the perversion of ideas in themselves unobjectionable. The probable origin of idolatry was the perversion of simple and sublime sentiments. When mankind, in the infancy of their existence, opened their eyes upon creation, they beheld everything wonderful and splendid in the scene. What could be more calculated to awaken inspiring contemplations? The mind would then soon pass from admiration to reverence and worship. Thus homage was paid to the sun, moon, and stars, which was only due to the Creator. The reverence felt for men of genius gave them an ideal grandeur, and exalted them into the rank of deities. Thus the perversion of good ideas occasioned the growth of bad ones.
2. Nothing can be more painful than to record the extensive prevalence of idolatry. It would have been a melancholy fact had history stated its existence in only one town; how sad when all nations are under its influence. This proves the folly and depravity of man. The whole world has wandered from God.
3. The effects of idolatry. While, on the one hand, the depravity of the human heart has produced idolatrous worship, this has reacted upon man himself, to debase his character. The effects of idolatry are cruelty, the rendering sacred the worst vices, the contaminating the temples and homes of the land, and the corrupting of society.
4. The spirit of the command in the text must be considered as including all mental idolatry. There is a distinction to be made between idolatry and image worship. The former, which is the worship of false gods, is forbidden in the First Commandment; the latter, which is the worship more especially of images or representations of the true God, is interdicted in the Second. But as all out-ward figures or images of God are forbidden, so it must be considered that every substitute for God, as an object of adoration and love, is also forbidden, for God requires the supreme homage of the heart. We must not form an image in the mind of anything lovely which turns aside the mind from God. Covetousness is idolatry. What images of folly and abomination lurk in the secret recesses of the mind!
II. Notice the particular reasons here assigned for its interdiction. These reasons comprehend both the jealousy and mercy of Jehovah; both powerful considerations.
1. The Divine jealousy and its terrific manifestations. The term is frequently applied in the Old Testament to God, and is strikingly descriptive of His determination to maintain His high prerogatives. Jealousy is considered as one of the strongest passions of our nature. It is the feeling which an interference on the part of another with the object of tender affection inspiresa feeling of wounded love. We are not to suppose that God is susceptible of any painful emotion of the mind, in the strict sense of the word; but this passion is employed to illustrate the fact of that concern about His people which God is described as entertaining. The heathen gods had no jealousy; they were not capable of love.
2. Another reason for the interdiction of idol worship is taken from the mercy of God; and it is one, in its nature, most conciliative. The Jewish economy, as well as the Christian, was founded in mercy. Their formation into a distinct and chosen people was the outcome of mercy. Their system of worship was ordained by heaven in mercy. They had providential mercies. What motives are there in the mercies of God to urge us to keep the commandments.(F. A. Cox, LL.D.)
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Exo. 20:4-6. There are few feelings stronger than those of the parent for his children, and it argues an extraordinary moral derangement where the father is careless and indifferent to the wellbeing of his offspring. The Supreme Legislator has taken advantage (so to speak) of these sentiments, and arranged them on the side of righteousness. He attacks men through the avenue of the domestic charities, and calls upon them to prove themselves not unnatural parents, by striving to lead a life of holiness and piety. If they care not for themselves, will they not for their children! If they are indifferent to the ruin which sin must procure for their own portion, can they consent to the sending down to those they best love an hereafter of woe and of shame? Yet this is precisely what they have a right to expect if they go on in a career of transgression. I, the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generations of them that hate Me.
We shall assume that the announced visitation of the iniquities of the fathers upon the children is unrestricted and general, so that it constitutes a feature in the fixed economy of the Almighty. We must state, however, that when we speak of the fathers and of the children, we are not to confine our ideas to that single relationship which these terms would ordinarily define. It is clear that the alleged principle is, the dealings of God must be supposed to take a wider range. The principle is, that one set of men shall be made to suffer for the sins of another set of men. We should do evident violence to the spirit, and, we may almost say, to the letter of the precept, were we to suppose that the transmission of iniquity was only then to take place when the parties were associated by the close ties of blood.H. Melvill, B.D.
Of course the case of the father and the child is one of those cases in which the principle is applicable; but whatever the connexion which binds together two sets of menwhether it be that which subsists between rulers and subjects, or that general one between the present generation and the following, or that between the members of a church and their successorsthe same principle is brought into play, so that the punishment of sin may descend on those who have had no part whatever in the commission of that sin.Ibid.
Now we can add other instances which, if less general, are not less decisive. You remember that when David sinned by numbering the people, the monarch himself was not stricken for the offence. A pestilence was sent, so that there died from Dan even to Beersheba seventy thousand men; and so evident was it, that the king cried out in the bitterness of his soul, I have sinned, but these sheep, what have they done? A still stronger instance is to be found in the history of the Gibeonites. Joshua had made a league with the Gibeonites, covenanting that they should not be destroyed with the rest of the inhabitants of Canaan. In contravention of this league, Saul sought to extirpate the Gibeonites, and in his zeal put many of them to death. This sin of Saul was not at once noticed by God; but in the days of David there was a famine, and God, on being enquired of, declared that it was a judgment on account of Sauls sin in slaying the Gibeonites. And what was the vengeance He then took for that sin? Seven of the sons of Saul were delivered to the Gibeonites, and hung up to the Lord in Gibeah of Saul; and then was God entreated for the land. Who will say that in this instance God visited not on the children the iniquity of the father? In like manner David had fallen into the heinous sins of adultery and murder; on confessing his iniquity he was punished! Hear how the prophet Nathan speaks to the kingBecause by this deed thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme, the child also that is born unto thee shall surely die. But our instances are not exhausted. We bid you next look at the Jews, strewed over the globe like the fragments of some mighty shipwreck. What have this people done that, through long centuries the weakest are strong enough to trample on them, the humblest lofty enough to despise them? Why should the countrymen of the Maccabees, those prodigies of valour, have been oppressed by every child, as though their arms were incapable of being strung by bravery? You can give no explanation of the history of the Jews since the destruction of Jerusalem, if you keep out of sight that they are under the ban of Gods displeasure for the iniquity of their forefathers. It is, however, worthy of observation that the proceeding after all cannot be repugnant to our notions of justice, since its exact parallel occurs in human legislation. If the statutebook of the country enact the visiting on children the sin of the father, it will be hard to show that the visitation is counter to common sense and equity. In cases of treason, we all know that it is not the traitor alone who is punished. His estates are confiscated, his honours destroyed; so that, in place of transmitting rank and affluence to his son, he transmits him nothing but shame and beggary. We do not say that the thing must be just because enacted by human laws; we only say that there can be no felt and acknowledged contradiction between the proceeding and the principles of equity, since human laws involve the children in the doom of the parent. He, who would have worn a ducal coronet and succeeded to a noble patrimony had his father kept unsullied his loyalty, loses both title and revenue if his father revolt against his king, though all the while he himself had no share in the treason; and the consequences go on from generation to generation; so that the highborn family is for ever degraded, and penury and ignominy make up the heritage which passes down to a remote posterity, who, except for the rebellion of a single ancestor, would have rolled in wealth and ranked with princes. We are clear that the gist of the question lies in this: Do the children when visited for the iniquities of the fathers lose anything to which they have a right, or receive anything which they have not deserved? It is certain, on all the principles of a sound theology, that sin involved the forfeiture of every blessing and exposure to every misery; it is just as certain, therefore, that no blessing can be obtained, and no misery averted, by right; and we think it, consequently, an inference not to be disputed, that whatever are Gods reasons for making adistinction between families, there cannot be injustice in visiting on children the iniquities of parents. The visitation cannot overpass what is due to the children themselves; and who then can pronounce the visitation unjust? Why, then, it is certain that the child is dealt with injuriously, if sentenced for the parents iniquity to penury and affliction. Are penury and affliction never overruled for good? It is necessarily an evil to have been born poor in place of rich; to be of weak health instead of strong; to struggle with adversity, in place of being lapped in prosperity. No man who feels himself immortal, who is conscious that this confined theatre of existence is but the school in which he is trained for a wider and nobler still, will contend for the necessary injuriousness of want and calamity; and yet, unless this necessary injuriousness is suffered, it cannot be proved that the children who are visited for the fathers iniquity are on the whole worse off than they would have been had there been no visitation. Thus the argument against as much falls to the ground as that against his justice; for, proceeding on the principle that physical evil is never subservient to moral good, we overthrow our position by assuming what we know to be false.H. Melvill.
ILLUSTRATIONS
BY
THE REV. WILLIAM ADAMSON
Idol Inventions! Exo. 20:4. The god Moloch was a fearful-looking monster, with a huge red mouth and grinning teeth, to show that he was fond of blood. The goddess Kalee, worshipped by many persons in India, is a fierce-looking female figure, with instruments of death in her hands, and a string of human skulls hanging round her neck as an ornament. Ganesa, another of the gods of the Hindus, is represented with the head of an elephant, and having four arms and hands. He always appears riding on the back of a great rat, having the figure of a serpent wreathed round his head. There are hundreds of uglier and more repulsive idols among the poor heathen in Africa and the South Seas; but it is not their hideousness that condemns them as objects of worship. Lovely idols are as loathsome in Gods sight. How lovely are the sun, moon, and stars, and how greatly the Psalmist appreciated their exceeding beauty! Yet men have made these beautiful creations of God loathsome. How! By making idols of them. The Brazen Serpent was no doubt a very bright and beautiful object; but it became repulsive when turned into an object of worship, and had to be destroyed. To admire a beautiful sculpturewhether stone, marble, brass, or silveris not wrong; but to adore it, raises the Divine jealousy.
Thou art a God who beareth
No rival near Thy throne;
Yet many a creature shareth
The love that is Thine own.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
(4) Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.The two main clauses of the second commandment are to be read together, so as to form one sentence: Thou shalt not make to thee any graven image, &c., so as to worship it. (See the explanation of Josephus, Ant. Jud., iii. 5, 5: .) It was not until the days of Hebrew decline and degeneracy that a narrow literalism pressed the words into an absolute prohibition of the arts of painting and sculpture (Philo, De Oraculis, 29). Moses himself sanctioned the cherubic forms above the mercy-seat, the brazen serpent, and the lilies and pomegranates of the golden candlestick. Solomon had lions on the steps of his throne, oxen under his molten sea, and palm-trees, flowers, and cherubim on the walls of the Temple, within and without (1Ki. 6:29). What the second commandment forbade was the worship of God under a material form. It asserted the spirituality of Jehovah. While in the rest of the ancient world there was scarcely a single nation or tribe which did not make to itself images of the gods, and regard the images themselves with superstitious veneration, in Judaism alone was this seductive practice disallowed. God would have no likeness made of Him, no representation that might cloud the conception of His entire separation from matter, His purely spiritual essence.
In heaven above . . . in the earth beneath . . . in the water under the earth.Comp. Gen. 1:1-7. The triple division is regarded as embracing the whole material universe. In the Egyptian idolatry images of all three kinds were included.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
THE SECOND COMMANDMENT, Exo 20:4-6.
4. Graven image That this commandment was not designed to prohibit the productions of sculpture and painting is apparent from the fact that Moses was expressly ordered to construct cherubim for the most holy place of the tabernacle, and to make the brazen serpent in the wilderness . Only idolatrous images, representations of God and designed for worship, are contemplated . The golden calf, Exo 32:1-4, is an illustration of the kind of graven images intended . Such images were graven or carved out of metal, wood, or stone. Comp. Jdg 17:3 ; 2Ki 21:7. The word translated likeness ( ) is commonly used of attempted representations of God, or of the real form of God as seen or conceived by man . Comp . Num 12:8; Deu 4:12; Deu 4:15-16; Psa 17:15. Accordingly a likeness of something in heaven above would be a portraiture of a god under the form of a star, or sun, or moon, or fowl; that of what is in the earth beneath would be the formation of a god in the similitude of a man or a woman, of a beast or any creeping thing that moves on land: that of things in the water under the earth would be, like the Philistine fish-god Dagon, the image of something that lives and moves in the water. All these are enumerated in Deu 4:15-19, which passage is an inspired commentary on this second commandment . The words under the earth show us the Hebrew conception of the water as lying lower than the land . When the land was elevated above the waters the latter fell back into the lower level of the seas. Gen 1:9-10. We should here observe that the use of images in worship is not always idolatry. Hence this second commandment is not to be confounded with the first, for it was assumed in the worship of the golden calf that the true God, who brought Israel out of Egypt, was honoured by means of the image. It has been persistently claimed by many religious leaders that the use of images in worship may be very helpful; they serve to concentrate the mind, and so prevent distraction of thought in one’s devotions. They deepen impressions, and so intensify and enliven the forms of worship. But all history shows that such employment of images in worship begets superstition, and turns the thought of the average worshipper more upon the creature than the Creator. The narrative of chapter 32 sets forth the unquestionable fact that the image-worship there described brought down the penal wrath of God upon the people. Such a method of promoting religious devotions is therefore fraught with great danger, and a perfect law required this prohibition of the use of graven images in worship.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Exo 20:4. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image The having or worshipping any kind of false gods, is absolutely forbidden in the first commandment. Here the mode of worshipping them, which generally prevailed among idolaters, and which was peculiarly offensive to Jehovah, is forbidden: the Israelites are enjoined to avoid forming not only any images of false deities, but any imaginary representations of the true GOD, See Deu 4:12. Thou shalt not make unto thee, says the Lord, thou shalt not form to thyself, or from thy own imagination, pesel, a graven, or carved image; or any temunah, any delineation, similitude, or representation of any thing: the word signifies any such orderly and regular distribution of parts, lineaments, colours, or the like, as raises in the mind the idea of the thing represented. See Parkhurst on the word. They were not to make to themselves for the purpose of worshipping (as Exo 20:5 shews) any such image or representation of any thing in heaven above, which may include not only God and his angels, the inhabitants of heaven; but, more particularly, the heavenly hosts, the sun, moon, and stars, the first and most universal objects of idolatrous worship. See Deu 4:19. Job 31:26-27. For the rest, it may be observed, that there was scarcely any creature, from the human, to the lowest reptile, which the folly of idolatry did not represent and sanctify; and, therefore, this prohibition, which extends to every creature in the heaven, or air, the earth and the sea, was by no means too general; as a knowledge of the superstitions of the Egyptians only, would prove; who deified creatures from the sun and the moon, to the ox that grazeth in the field, and the crocodile which devoureth in the waters.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
These verses contain the second commandment, in which the ordinances of divine worship are pointed out, the prohibition of all creature adoration, and the reasons on which the worship of God alone is enjoined. Isa 40:18 ; Deu 4:15 .
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Exo 20:4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness [of any thing] that [is] in heaven above, or that [is] in the earth beneath, or that [is] in the water under the earth:
Ver. 4. Thou shalt not make unto thee, ] i.e., For religious use; for civil they may be made. Mat 22:20 Howbeit the Turks will not endure any image, no not upon their coins, because of this second commandment. The Papists by their sacrilegious practices, have taken away this commandment out of their vulgar catechism. This is a great stumbling block to the Jews, and a let to their conversion: for ever since their return from Babylon, they do infinitely abhor idolatry. And for their coming to Christian sermons, they say, that as long as they shall see the preacher direct his speech and prayer to that little wooden crucifix that stands on the pulpit by him, to call it his Lord and Saviour to kneel to it, to embrace it, to kiss it, to weep upon it, as is the fashion of Italy, this is preaching sufficient for them, and persuades them more with the very sight of it, to hate Christian religion, than any reason that the world can allege to love it. a See Trapp (for summary of Law) on “ Exo 20:17 “
a Specul. Europ.
make. The making is equally forbidden as the worshipping.
graven image. Hebrew. pesel, a sculpture. First occurance.
shalt not make
There is a threefold giving of the law. First, orally, in Exo 20:1-17. This was pure law, with no provision of priesthood and sacrifice for failure, and was accompanied by the “judgments”; Exo 21:1 to Exo 23:13; relating to the relations of Hebrew with Hebrew; to which were added Exo 23:14-19 directions for keeping three annual feasts, and Exo 23:20-33 instructions for the conquest of Canaan. These words Moses communicated to the people. Exo 24:3-8. Immediately, in the persons of their elders, they were admitted to the fellowship of God. Exo 24:9-11.
Second, Moses was then called up to receive the tables of stone. Exo 24:12-18. The story then divides. Moses, in the mount, receives the gracious instructions concerning the tabernacle, priesthood, and sacrifice (Exodus 25-31.) Meantime (Exodus 32.), the people, led by Aaron, break the first commandment. Moses, returning, breaks the tables “written with the finger of God.”; Exo 31:18; Exo 32:16-19.
Third, the second tables were made by Moses, and the law again written by the hand of Jehovah Exo 34:1; Exo 34:28; Exo 34:29; Deu 10:4.
Exo 32:1, Exo 32:8, Exo 32:23, Exo 34:17, Lev 19:4, Lev 26:1, Deu 4:15-19, Deu 4:23-25, Deu 5:8, Deu 27:15, 1Ki 12:28, 2Ch 33:7, Psa 97:7, Psa 115:4-8, Psa 135:15-18, Isa 40:18-20, Isa 42:8, Isa 42:17, Isa 44:9-20, Isa 45:16, Isa 46:5-8, Jer 10:3-5, Jer 10:8, Jer 10:9, Jer 10:14-16, Eze 8:10, Act 17:29, Act 19:26-35, Rom 1:23, Rev 9:20, Rev 13:14, Rev 13:15, Rev 14:9-11, Rev 16:2
Reciprocal: Gen 35:2 – strange Exo 32:31 – made Deu 4:16 – corrupt Deu 4:17 – General Deu 5:9 – shalt not Deu 16:22 – image Jos 24:14 – put Jdg 17:3 – a graven image Jdg 18:30 – set up 2Ki 17:35 – charged them Psa 78:58 – with Psa 106:20 – into Isa 44:13 – he marketh Act 7:43 – figures 1Jo 5:21 – keep
NO GRAVEN IMAGE
Thou shalt not make any graven image, etc.
Exo 20:4
I. The primary meaning of this commandment no longer needs enforcement.There is no longer any disposition to worship Jehovah under any symbolical form, whether of a calf or anything else. Even if anywhere excessive honour seems to be paid to pictures and statues of our Lord or His Mother, this can hardly be strictly said to be a breach of the Second Commandment. For the essential sin, against which the Second Commandment is directed, is the low conception of the Divine Being which is involved in representing Him as adequately symbolised by any created thing; and this would not be involved in any excessive reverence for statues or pictures, which only attempt to portray Christs humanity. When God came in such a form, that He could be seen and handled as the Son of Man, He satisfied that craving which in earlier ages required restraint. He showed that God could be seen and known and worshipped as man without danger of idolatry. No doubt pictures and images of Christ may be held in a superstitious reverence, and may in that way weaken our sense of unseen realities. But it would be as uncharitable to stigmatise the reverence paid to them as idolatrous as to call our regard for the relics of a dead child or friend idolatrous. Iconoclasm, under whatever guise it poses, is as wanting in lucidity as it is in charity; while the faults of character which it breeds and fosters are certainly far more serious than any which it is likely to cure. It is possible, but only just possible, that a very uneducated Christian might think that the material atoms composing a painting or statue, which represented Christ, were more sacred in themselves than the atoms composing a chair or a table. Such an idea would show a certain confusion of thought, but it would not involve a breach of the Second Commandment.
II. The Second Commandment has still a meaning; it is the safeguard of the imagination.It bids us, first of all, think of God as He has revealed Himselfas the Father; it forbids the misuse of the imaginative faculty in thinking of Him as other than He is. This is its deepest lesson. It is the germ-thought which prescribes all high and reverent thought about God. God is to be honoured with our imagination. And then, in order that we may make it capable of honouring Him, its use is to be strictly restrained; it must not run riot and construct false views of life, or paint false and bad pictures within us and dwell on them. It needs restraint; it needs also cultivation. It can never be said too strongly that to use your imagination aright you must spiritualise it. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see Godthey and only they. You must keep its delicate fibre untarnished; otherwise you cannot see that which is, the real, the Divine.
The Second Commandment is the safeguard of the imagination; it keeps us true to high conceptions of God: it forbids us to imagine Him as a God from whom we should shrink if He were a mana non-natural Being; it forbids any degradation in our thought of Him. In order to lay hold of its spirit, we must discipline the imagination so that we may be able to use it aright: we must train it by keeping it from degradation, but especially by filling it with all that is beautiful and true. For both in the disciplining of the imagination in ourselves and in the training of it in others, the Thou shalt not, the mere laws of prohibition and restraint are of little use. Practically we shall find that the only way not to exercise the imagination wrongly is to exercise it rightly. If we would keep it from base uses, we must put it to noble uses. We must walk in the Spirit if we are not to fulfil the lusts of the flesh. The Divine law for us is positive. The grim sign-posts that keep us out of the woods by assuring us that guns and man-traps are to be found there, will not give us of themselves the benefits of healthy exercise: they may keep us from dangers, they will not give us fresh air. The only way of keeping the imagination from poison is by presenting it with its true food. Give it real loveliness to dwell on and it will reject the sham, the pretentious, the unworthy.
Illustration
Nothing could be more repugnant than for us to bow in worship to an idol. Every instinct of our souls would rebel. But have you never bestowed on a friend, on your business, on your money, on yourself, the love and adoration which belong to God? And there is a still more special modern peril. We may not have placed a material idol in the shrine where we ought to have worshipped the true and living God, but we have seated upon His throne that impersonal energy called force. Talk about the fascination and danger of idol worship! Here is a peril a thousandfold more terrible. Millions of us (unconsciously, perhaps) are prostrating ourselves before force and law instead of before mind and heart. These fearful abstractions are benumbing and paralysing our emotions of love and devotion. I believe that a century of such prostration (it cannot be called worship) will have as deadly an influence on the soul as did the worship of Astarte and Baal. Sceptics may sneer at the idea of Gods being jealous as immoral, but one thing is certain, and that is that Nature, or Force, or whatever you wish to call that supreme power that shapes the destinies of men, will never let them worship anything but the highest. With a fearful and inexorable judgment, he (or it) visits the iniquity of worshipping anything less than the highest with infinite misery and shame. If this jealousy can be in nature without subjecting it to reproach, why should it be a reproach to natures God!
The second commandment 20:4-6
"As the first commandment forbids any association with other gods to those who would be Yahweh’s, the second commandment and the two that follow it set special dimensions of their relationship with him." [Note: Ibid.]
This command was a prohibition against making images or likenesses of Yahweh. God did not forbid making pictures or images of other creatures. The rationale behind this command is that any likeness of God demeans Him and retards rather than advances His worship. Furthermore, by making an image of a god people put themselves in a position of sovereignty over the deity. God wanted His people to accept their place as the creatures of the Creator. The Israelite who made an image of Yahweh would put himself or herself in the position of creator and Yahweh in the place of created thing. Also he or she would face temptation to confuse the image with God and worship it rather than Him.
The consequences of disobedience to this command would continue for a few generations, as the later history of Israel illustrated. However obedience to it would result in blessing for limitless generations (cf. Deu 7:9-10).
"Yahweh’s jealousy is a part of his holiness (Exo 34:14) and is demanded by what he is. It is justified by the fact that it comes only upon those who, having promised to have no God but him, have gone back on that promise. Those who do so show that they ’hate’ him, that they hold him in contempt: upon them in result must come a deserved judgment, across four generations." [Note: Ibid., p. 287.]
"The use of images and the human control of the god that was a part of their use would infringe on the freedom of Yahweh to manifest himself when and how he sovereignly determined. By prohibiting the one means by which the gods of the people around Israel supposedly manifested themselves Israel was protected from the assimilation of foreign religious values, and the prohibition of images played a significant role in the successful survival of Israel’s religion. It seems clear that the prohibition of images both in practice and in its theological basis is but another example of the fundamentally different religious value-system that distinguished Israel from her ancient Near Eastern contemporaries." [Note: Edward M. Curtis, "The Theological Basis for the Prohibition of Images in the Old Testament," Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 28:3 (September 1985):287.]
"Through sacrifice to the idol, large amounts of material productivity were funneled into the control of the Canaanite priestly and royal classes. The idol was therefore a kind of tax or tribute gathering device. In this context, Israelite hostility to cultic images yields to a possible two-fold interpretation. First, by repudiating the cultic image, Israel rid itself of an important source of wealth for the ruling classes, thereby thwarting possible internal programs seeking to re-establish political hierarchy. Second, frontier Israel was insuring [sic ensuring] that agricultural goods used in cultic sacrifice would be circulated back into the producing community [cf. Deu 12:5-7; Deu 26:12-15]. An imageless cult was one way of enhancing political and economic self-sufficiency." [Note: James M. Kennedy, "The Social Background of Early Israel’s Rejection of Cultic Images: A Proposal," Biblical Theology Bulletin 17:4 (October 1987):138.]
THE SECOND COMMANDMENT.
“Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, … thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them.”– Exo 20:4-6.
How far does the second of these clauses modify the first? Men there are who maintain the severe independence of the former, so that it forbids the presence of any image or likeness in the house of God, even for innocent purposes of adornment. But the Decalogue is not a liturgical directory: what it forbids in church it forbids anywhere; and on this theory the statues in Parliament Square would be idolatrous, as well as those in Westminster Abbey. And such Christians are more Judaical than the Jews, who were taught to place in the very Holy of Holies golden cherubim overshadowing the mercy-seat, and to represent them again upon its curtains.
It is therefore plain that the precept never forbade imagery, but idolatry, which is the making of images to satisfy the craving of men’s hearts for a sensuous worship–the making of them “unto thee.” The second clause qualifies and elucidates the first. And what the commandment prohibits is any attempt to help our worship by representing the object of adoration to the senses.
The higher and more subtle idolatries do not conceive that wood or gold is actually transformed into their deities; but only that the deities are locally present in the images, which express their attributes–power in a hundred hands, beneficence in a hundred breasts. But in thus expressing, they degrade and cramp the conception.
They may perhaps evade the reproach of Isaiah that they warm themselves with a portion of timber, and roast meat with another portion, and make the remainder a god (Isa 44:15-17), by urging that the timber is not the god, but an abode which he chooses because it expresses his specific qualities. But they cannot evade the reproach of St. Paul, that being ourselves the offspring of God, we ought not to compare Him to the workmanship of our hands, graven with art and man’s device (Act 17:29).
A truly spiritual worship is intellectually as well as morally the most elevating exercise of the soul, which it leads onward and upward, making of all that it knows and thinks a vestibule, beyond which lie higher knowledge and deeper feeling as yet unattained.
Why is Gothic architecture better adapted for religious buildings than any Grecian or Oriental style? Because its long aisles, vaulted roofs and pointed arches, leading the vision up to the unseen, tell of mystery, and draw the mind away beyond the visible and concrete to something greater which it hints; while rounded arches and definite proportions shut in at once the vision and the mind. The difference is the same as between poetry and logic.
And so it is with worship. We fetter and cramp our thoughts of deity when we bind them to even the loftiest conceptions which have ever been shut up in marble or upon canvas. The best image that ever took shape is inferior to the poorest spiritual conception of God, in this respect if in no other–that it has no expansiveness, it cannot grow. And in connecting our prayers with it, we virtually say, ‘This satisfies my conception of God.’
It is not to be condemned merely as inadequate, for so are all our highest thoughts of deity; nor only because average humanity (which is supposed to stand most in need of the help and suggestion of art) will never learn the fine distinctions by which subtle intellects withhold from the image itself the worship which it evokes, and which goes out in its direction. It is still more mischievous because, even for the trained theologian, it is the petrifaction of what is meant to develop and expand, the solidification of the inadequate, the accepting of what is human as our idea of the divine.
Nor will it long continue to be merely inadequate. Experience proves that ideas, like air and water, cannot be confined without stagnating. Idolatries not only fail to develop, they degenerate; and systems, however orthodox they may appear at starting, which connect worship with palpable imagery, are doomed to sink into superstition.
To this precept there is added a startling and painful caution–“For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God.” That a man should be jealous is no passport to our friendship: we think of unreasonable estrangements, exaggerated demands, implacable and cruel resentments. It would not enter the average mind to doubt that one is highly praised when another says of him, ‘I never traced in his words or actions the slightest stain of jealousy.’ And yet we are to think of God Himself as the jealous God.
Upon reflection, however, we must admit that a man is not condemned as jealous-minded because he is capable of jealousy, but because he has an unjust and unreasonable tendency towards it. It is a narrowing and suspicious quality when it operates without due cause, a vindictive and cruel one when it operates in excessive measure. But what should we think of a parent who felt no jealousy if the heart of his child were stolen from him by intriguing servants or by frivolous comrades? Now, God has called Israel His son, even His firstborn. The truth is that with us jealousy is dangerous and frequently perverted, because we are bad judges of the measure of our own rights, especially when our affections are involved. But some measure of jealousy is the necessary pain of love neglected, love wronged or slighted by those upon whom it has a claim. Jealousy is the shadow thrown where the sunshine of love is intercepted, and it is strong in proportion to the strength of the light. It operates in the heart exactly like the sense of justice in the reason. Justice expects a recompense where it has given service, and jealousy asks for love where it has given affection.
And therefore, when God tells us that He is jealous, He implies that He condescends to love us, to look for a return, to desire more from us than outward service. We cannot be jealous concerning things which are indifferent to us. Even the jealousy of rival competitors for business or for place may be measured by the desire of each for that which the other would engross. The politician is not jealous of the millionaire, nor the capitalist of the prime minister.
Now, if God is jealous when the enemies of our soul would steal away our loyalty, it surely follows that we shall not be left to contend with those enemies alone: He values us; He is upon our side; He will help us to overcome them.
And now we begin to see why this attribute is connected with the second commandment and not the first. The apostate who betakes himself to another god is almost beyond the reach of this tender and intimate emotion: he is still loved, for God loves all men; but yet perhaps the chord is unstrung which trembles responsive to this plaintive note.
When a man who confesses God begins to weary of spiritual intercourse with the Lord of spirits, when he can no longer worship One whose actual presence is realised because His voice is heard within, when the likeness of man or brute, or brightness of morning, or marvel of life or its reproductiveness, contents him as a representation of God the invisible, then his heart is beginning to go after the creature, to content itself with artistic loveliness or majesty, to let go the grasp as upon a living hand, by which alone the soul may be sustained when it stumbles, or guided when it would err.
To those who are within His covenant–to us, therefore, as to His ancient Israel–He says, “I the Lord thy God am a jealous God.” Because I am “thy God.”
The assertion of a Divine jealousy is but one difficulty of this remarkable verse. The Lord goes on to describe Himself as “visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me, and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love Me and keep My commandments.” And is this reasonable? To punish the child, to be avenged upon the children’s children, for sins which are not their own? We know how often the sceptic has made gain out of this representation–which is but his own unauthorised gloss, since in reality God has said nothing about punishing the righteous with the wicked. It is not true that all sad and disastrous consequences are penal; many are disciplinary, and even to the people of God some are surgical, cutting away what would lead to disease and death. Are no evil consequences probable, if men brought up amid scenes dishonouring to God were treated exactly like those who have since childhood felt as it were the hand of a Father upon their head? For themselves it is best and kindest that so deep a loss could come home to their consciousness in pain.
At all events, the assertion so early made in Scripture is confirmed in all the experience of the race. Insanity, idiocy, scrofula, consumption, are too often, though not always, the hereditary results of guilt. Sins of the flesh are visited upon the bodily system. Sins of the temper, such as pride, cynicism and frivolity, are felt in the mental structure of the race. And the sins which offend directly against God, do they bring no results with them? Ask of the investigators of the new science of heredity and transmitted peculiarities, whether it stops short of the highest and holiest parts of human nature. Or consider the ravages which victory and consequent wealth have made, again and again, in the character of whole nations.
There is no doctrine impugned in Scripture, which men have less prospect of shaking off, even if they close their Bibles for ever, than this. If it were not there, we should be perplexed at a want of conformity between the ways of God in nature and what is asserted of Him in His Book.
But it is either slander or blindness to represent this law, viewed in its entirety, as other than benevolent. The transmission of the result of evil is only a part of the vast law which has bound men together in nations and families, as partners and members with each other. It is clear that distinctive advantages cannot be bestowed upon the children of the good, as such, unless the same advantages be withheld from the evil race beside them. If the prizes of a university are won by knowledge, the result is that ignorance is “visited,” in the withholding of them. And if, in the vaster university of life, health, affluence, good repute and a clear intellect are the transmitted results of virtue, then disease, poverty, neglect and incompetence become the dire bequest of the unrighteous.
There is no choice, therefore, except either to carry out this law, or else to bid every man in the world begin life, not as “the heir of all the ages,” but absolutely destitute of all that has been acquired by his fellow-men.
Sometimes a hint is given us of what this would be. There is brought occasionally into civilised communities, from the depths of forests, a creature without language or decency or intellect, with low forehead and brutal appetites, who in his early childhood had wandered away and been lost,–brought up, men say, by the strange compassion of some lower creature, and now sunken well-nigh to its level. To this degradation we should all come, if it were not for the transmitted inheritance of our fathers. And so vast is the upward force of this grand law, that it is steadily though slowly upheaving the whole mass; and the lowest of today, visited for ancestral failings by sinking to the bottom, is higher than if he had been left absolutely alone.
This over-weight of good is clearly seen by comparing the clauses, for the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children to the third and fourth generation, but mercy is shown in them that love God upon a wholly different scale. Even “unto thousands” would enormously counterbalance three generations. But the Revised Version rightly suggests “a thousand generations” in the margin, and supports it by one of its very rare references. It is plainly stated in Deu 7:9, that He “keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love Him and keep His commandments unto a thousand generations.”
Lastly, it is to be observed that in all this passage the gospel is shining through the law. It is not a question of just dealing, but of emotion. God is not a master exacting taskwork, but a Father, jealous if we refuse our hearts. He visits sin upon the posterity “of them that hate,” not only of them that disobey Him. And when our hearts sink, we who are responsible for generations yet to be, as we reflect upon our frailty, our ignorance and our sins, upon the awful consequences which may result from one heedless act–nay, from a gesture or a look–He reminds us that He does not requite those who serve Him only with a measured wage, but shows “mercy” upon those who love Him unto a thousand generations.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Fuente: Scofield Reference Bible Notes
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: Expositors Bible Commentary