(See Leviticus 26:39 Lamentations 5:7 following) The "inherited curse" seems to fall often most heavily on the least guilty persons but such suffering must always be free from the sting of conscience it is not like the visitation for sin on the individual by whom the sin has been committed. Sons and remote descendants inherit the consequences of their fathers' sins, in disease, poverty, captivity, with all the influences of bad example and evil communications. Visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children - (Compare Exodus 34:7 Jeremiah 32:18). The truth expressed in it was declared more fully to Moses when the name of Yahweh was proclaimed to him after he had interceded for Israel on account of the golden calf ( Exodus 34:6-7 see the note). This reason applies to the First, as well as to the second commandment. The ancient Persians and the earliest legislators of Rome also agreed in repudiating images of the Deity.Ī jealous God - Deuteronomy 6:15 Joshua 24:19 Isaiah 42:8 Isaiah 48:11 Nahum 1:2. The spiritual acts of worship were symbolized in the furniture and ritual of the tabernacle and the altar, and for this end the forms of living things might be employed as in the case of the Cherubim (see Exodus 25:18 note): but the presence of the invisible God was to be marked by no symbol of Himself, but by His words written on stones, preserved in the ark in the holy of holies and covered by the mercy-seat. In the Egyptian idolatry images of all three kinds were included.īarnes' Notes on the BibleGraven image - Any sort of image is here intended.Īs the first commandment forbids the worship of any false god, seen or unseen, it is here forbidden to worship an image of any sort, whether the figure of a false deity Joshua 23:7 or one in any way symbolic of Yahweh (see Exodus 32:4). The triple division is regarded as embracing the whole material universe. 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. 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. What the second commandment forbade was the worship of God under a material form.
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” ( 1Kings 6:29).
Moses himself sanctioned the cherubic forms above the mercy-seat, the brazen serpent, and the lilies and pomegranates of the golden candlestick. 5, § 5: ‘ Ο δεύτερος λó γος κελεύει μηδένος εἰκόνα ζώον ποιήσαντας προσκυνεῖν.) 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). Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(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.
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