Don't bow
Scripture doesn’t use the phrase “Ten Commandments.” Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 record Yahweh’s “Ten Words” (Exod 34:28; Deut 4:13). These texts contain imperatives, but, like the rest of the Torah, they include declarations, warnings, and promises. That multiplicity of speech acts is better captured by the phrase “Ten Words.”
The First of the Ten Words speaks to the question of whom we worship: We are to have no other gods before the face of Yahweh. The Second Word had to do with how we worship: We are to approach God as He commands us to approach Him.
The Second Word needs to be more frequently understood. The question isn't whether physical things, man-made things, can become vehicles for God's self-communication, places and moments of communion with God. The question is, which things and moments has God given as vehicles for His self-gift. Nowhere does God promise to be present through pictures or statues.
The Second Word has also gotten tangled up in debates about whether we can paint, draw pictures, or make sculptures of Jesus or God the Father. It’s been taken as a prohibition of placing art, especially representational art, in a place of worship. Some claim that this prohibits all representational art.
That last interpretation at least takes the specifics of the commandment seriously. If the Second Word prohibition making images, it prohibits all images. The commandment doesn’t say, “Don’t make images of God.” It says, “Don’t make graven images of things in heaven, on the earth, or the waters under the earth.” That covers everything because there aren’t any things anywhere except in heaven, earth, or under the earth.
But the commandment doesn't prohibit making images. If it did, it would contradict other commandments from the same book of Exodus. Just a few chapters after Yahweh speaks the Ten Words, He tells Moses to “make two cherubim of gold“ (25:18), and a lampstand with cups “shaped like almond blossoms” (25:33), and pomegranates of blue and scarlet material (28:33). Cherubim are heavenly things, almonds and pomegranates are earthly things. Palm trees were carved on the temple walls, and Solomon’s throne was flanked by lions.
If the Second Word was intended to prohibit all representational art, the Lord didn’t stick with the program very long. The Lord doesn’t contradict himself. He’s not prohibiting making or making things that resemble what He made.
What is He forbidding, then? He’s prohibiting making likenesses of anything for a particular purpose – to bow before them and to serve them. The two verbs in verse 5 are common Hebrew words for worship. The word usually translated as “worship” actually means “prostrate oneself.” It describes a bodily posture. “Serve” is a general priestly term describing the work of Levites and Aaronic priests. God forbids making images that serve as the focal point of the liturgical action.
Most directly, Yahweh prohibits the kind of service ancient priests performed before the images of their gods. For ancient people, a temple without an image was a temple without a god-in-residence, and the main services of a temple were performed before and for the image. Priests brought food, cleaned the image, and bowed before it. On special occasions, the priests took the image out of the temple to process before awed worshipers.
What Yahweh specifically prohibits is “prostration” before images. He prohibits us from adopting a particular bodily posture before graven images. He doesn’t say it’s OK to bow with our bodies as long as we’re not bowing in our hearts. He doesn’t say that we’re free to use our bodies any way we like as long as we keep the right thoughts in our heads. He prohibits a particular bodily action.
Of course, bodily actions embody intentions. If a priest dropped a piece of bread before the lampstand and bent down to pick it up, he wouldn’t be violating this commandment. God specifically prohibits the bodily act of doing-homage-by-prostration and, more generally, the actions of doing-homage-to-images and serving images. God cares what we do with our bodies, and a good intention doesn’t make a bad action good.
Isaiah mocks idolaters for making a god from a log and using the rest of the log to cook food and warm themselves. It looks so stupid that we must ask: Did ancient people think the image was divine? It’s virtually impossible to know what ancient people thought about their gods, but from the written sources, it seems that the answer, at least for thoughtful elites, was No. Everyone understood the chunk of wood wasn’t the same as Zeus or Athena; the bronze image wasn’t Baal, Asherah or Ra.
Instead, they thought the image was a point of connection with the god. The image of the god was a sign of the presence of the god, and the service done to the image was implicitly service done to the god. Some ritual texts from the ancient world indicate rites done before an image was intended to "download" the divine essence into the image. Priests do their work before the statue to “quicken” the divine essence in the statue. The metal wasn’t the god but became identified with the god, filled with divine power, a ladder linking heaven and earth.
Yahweh’s prohibition of images is even more radical than we might realize. He isn’t just saying, “I’m not made of stone, wood, bronze, or gold.” Everyone already knew that the gods weren’t made of such things. He’s saying, “Don’t think you can serve Me by serving an image, that you can honour me by honouring a likeness of Me.” The Second Word, in short, prohibits Israel from doing what ancient people saw as the normal worship business.
In my judgment, nothing in the new covenant changes this prohibition. Jesus is the Son of God in the flesh, visible and tangible, photographable and picture able. There's nothing wrong with drawing a picture of Jesus. There's nothing wrong with stained glass windows, murals, or statues in the church. But then, there never was anything wrong with pictures, windows, murals, or statues. At Sinai and still today, the issue is how these images are used.
