Exodus 20:4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved 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.
Leviticus 19:4 Do not turn to idols or make for yourselves any gods of cast metal: I am the LORD your God.
Leviticus 26:1 “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.
Deuteronomy 4:15 “Therefore watch yourselves very carefully.
Deuteronomy 4:23 Take care, lest you forget the covenant of the LORD your God, which he made with you
Deuteronomy 27:15 “‘Cursed be the man who makes a carved or cast metal image, an abomination to the LORD, a thing made by the hands of a craftsman, and sets it up in secret.’
Psalms 97:7 All worshipers of images are put to shame, who make their boast in worthless idols;
Isaiah 42:8 I am the LORD; that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols.
Isaiah 44:9 All who fashion idols are nothing, and the things they delight in do not profit. Their witnesses neither see nor know, that they may be put to shame.
Isaiah 45:16 All of them are put to shame and confounded; the makers of idols go in confusion together.
Jeremiah 10:3 for the customs of the peoples are vanity.
Jeremiah 10:8-9 They are both stupid and foolish; the instruction of idols is but wood!
Romans 1:23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
Revelation 9:20 The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands nor give up worshiping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk,
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. (Ellicott)
As 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 or one in any way symbolic of Yahweh. (Barnes)
“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. עשׂה 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,” (Brown)
There is no God but Me. Don’t worship or place in worship anything but Me. Also, don’t make an image of Me or anything else, and indeed don’t worship it. We may find this type of worship foolish and even a bit old fashion. No one in the western world would do anything like this. Maybe some satan worshipers or others hope to find peace of mind through some eastern religion. For the most part, we think this is foolish to fashion an idol and place it in our home or church to worship it. The western world is far above this, but I might say, much further away from knowing God. The western world, for the most part, denies God, things of God, and the Word of God. They say there is no God and then live a life that is void of Him and any worship of Him. The idolaters at least try to have a god to serve – howbeit ever so wrong and God-defying. No, the western world is a place of self-reliant enlightenment. In this, they find what the world has to offer pleasing and though it never seems to satisfy an inner hunger, they keep chasing after it. Their idol is things of this world and what it has to offer. Though they may not make it an animate object of worship, it is an inanimate object of worship.
Note the verses above to those who deny and reject God and His commandments.
