Why Is Idolatry Taken so Seriously in the Bible? Even granting the fact that God doesn’t send these kinds of punishment to everyone who commits idolatry, it’s clear that God doesn’t like it. While many of these punishments are tied to the fact that Israel had a particular arrangement with God, a binding contract that required obedience in many areas from tithing to diet. Sometimes he simply withdraws his protection and lets things take their natural course, such as when the Babylonians invade Israel. Sometimes God simply warns a leader to repent and strikes that leader down for leading his people astray. Time and time again, the Israelites fall into idolatry and are punished by God sending illnesses or snakes. The Bible also frequently describes harsh punishments for idolatry. The locals assumed they were the Greek gods Zeus and Hermes in human form and tried to offer sacrifices to them. The mistake of worshipping people comes up in a dramatic way in Acts 14 when Paul and Barnabas heal a crippled man in Lystra. People committed idolatry in a variety of ways, from setting up pagan altars at special locations to hold sacrifices to worshipping plants or animals or worshipping human beings. However, the way the idol is made is not the point. Moses was enraged when he came down the mountain and saw what was going on and threw down the two tablets inscribed with the commandments.Ī good lawyer might have tried getting the Israelites off by pointing out to Moses that the golden calf was a molten image, not a graven image (which has to be carved or sculpted). The Israelites got impatient, and Moses’ brother Aaron melted down gold to make an idol in the form of a calf for the people to worship ( Exodus 32:1-4). Perhaps the classic example of people making an idol comes while God was giving Moses the 10 Commandments and other laws on Mount Sinai. Isaiah 44’s story of the carpenter making a wooden idol is one of the numerous verses in the Old and New Testament that reference idolatry. What Is the History of Idolatry in the Bible? So, the point is not that God has a problem with creating images in and of itself he has a problem with idolatry. Isaiah 44:13-20 describes this action with the story of a carpenter who cuts down a tree and uses half the wood to cook food and the other half to make an idol. However, Biblical scholars have generally agreed that the phrase refers to “ household idols,” statues that pagans made as personal gods to worship and pray to. Some fundamentalist groups over the centuries have taken this to mean that people should not make artwork of any kind. The command is reiterated in Leviticus 26:1, which says, “You shall not make idols for yourselves or erect an image or pillar, and you shall not set up a figured stone in your land to bow down to it, for I am the Lord your God.” Generally, Protestants refer to it as the second commandment, building on the commandment “you shall have no other gods before me” ( Exodus 20:3). This is one of the 10 Commandments that God gave to Moses on Mount Sinai, depending on your Bible translation or tradition its order may change. The phrase comes from Exodus 20:4, which in the King James translation reads, “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” What Is a Graven Image according to the Bible? It gets to the heart of a classic temptation that every human faces: the temptation to worship and glorify something other than God. Changes in language aside, the concept is actually very important. Unless you grew up reading the King James Bible, the term “graven image” probably sounds a bit old-fashioned.
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