I never really got the Second Commandment, “You shall not make for yourself any graven image.” I remember reading that ancient Jewish people took this commandment to mean that they could not represent people or nature in drawings, etchings, sculpture or any other form. But the commandment is not really about art. It is about worship.
I never really got the Second Commandment, “You shall not make for yourself any graven image.”
I remember reading that ancient Jewish people took this commandment to mean that they could not represent people or nature in drawings, etchings, sculpture, or any other form.
Why would a God who uses the fundamental forces of nature as his canvas, who paints with a palette of a million hues and sculpts everything from supernovas to fireflies object to his creatures making a little art of their own? Surely he doesn’t want to be the only artist on display?
But the commandment is not really about art. It is about worship. The explanation appended to the command goes on to state, “You shall not bow down to them (the graven images) or serve them.”
God has never been against art. He gifted people “to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze, to cut and set stones, to work in wood and ... all kinds of artistic craftsmanship.” He then commissioned them to beautify Israel’s place of worship.
The Second Commandment was not about art but worship. The making of images — idols — to serve in worship was a prominent part of all the great cultures of the day. The Greeks and Egyptians, Assyrians and Canaanites all made use of graven images in their worship.
The absence of such images among the Jews set them apart from their neighbors who, upon their first encounter, must have assumed that Israel was a godless culture, since it had no gods. The use of images as focal points for the worship of a deity was universal.
So why did Israel’s God forbid the practice? Why the “no graven image” rule? Some scholars believe the reason for the ban can be found in the idea that God’s revelation of himself to Israel was audible rather than visual. He gave humans his word rather than his picture.
While there is something to be said for this argument (see Deuteronomy 4:12), it does not seem to be the whole story. The biblical prohibition against using images in worship is based not on the inferiority of visual revelation but on the danger inherent in the use of such images.
Why not use an image to worship God? First, because the media is inadequate to its subject.
Every image is, of necessity, so limiting that it distorts the God it represents. The visual image does not have enough bandwidth, if you will, to carry the revelation of God to us. It would be like trying to watch “Fiddler on the Roof” over a dial-up connection.
The prohibition is also based on the possibility that worshipers will confuse the image for its original. It sounds preposterous, but it has happened in every generation. We see it in lesser things: the person who goes from loving books for their content to loving them for the way they look, and smell; for their age and edition. We see it in the person who regards his phone not as an instrument of communication but as a symbol for being cool.
An even bigger problem lies in the laws of spiritual reality: A person becomes like the object of his worship (see Psalm 115). If you don’t believe this, just look at how the tweens who idolize Miley Cyrus, and how all the men you know have haircuts suspiciously similar to Brad Pitt’s latest movie character. We become like the thing we idolize.
Perhaps the most important reason for not making a graven image is that God has already made one. “He made man in his own image, after his own likeness.” The person in the aisle next to you — she is God’s image. The helpless baby, the elderly man, the child skipping rope: these are God’s image. Of course, it takes all of us to present that image in a compelling way.
Even then, the image has been marred, which is why God sent Jesus. He gave us his word and his picture when he gave us his son, who is “the image of the invisible God.” When we worship God through him, the laws of spiritual reality begin to work for us rather than against us. Little by little, we become more like him.
Shayne Looper writes for The Daily Reporter in Coldwater, Mich.