#Exodus 20:4-6

The second commandment

Aniconism! Or not!

The Hebrew syntax is a little unclear here, so the aniconism reading is forgivable. But it doesn’t really fit the historical setting, and I don’t think it’s really in the text at all.

The notion of an aniconic ancient Israel is, I think, another way that we try to make Israel exceptional, when it was just another ANE subculture. Our first guess should always be that Israel was doing the same thing as its neighbors. We need hard evidence to suggest otherwise.

An ancient Israel without images is like a later Jewish/Christian fever dream of this magical biblical fairyland that is *absolutely nothing,* how dare you even suggest such a thing, like those nasty Near Eastern heathen-types. Shudder.

There were images - of animals, plants, probably people - all over ancient Israel. The idea that Israel was some image-free zone is decidedly anachronistic. Israel didn’t have a statue of its main deity in its temple. But otherwise...

Even the temple itself was covered in images. Oxen, pomegranates, palm trees, lions - all part of the temple’s decorative scheme. And let us not forget the cherubs - carved, representative, and right in the inner sanctum. No images? Images everywhere.

To my mind this commandment is much simpler in a sense than it is usually made out to be. Don’t make and bow down to statues - that’s how everyone else does their worship thing, but we don’t. That’s it, folks. It’s expressed a little convolutedly, but the message is easy enough.

And there’s another nice logic here: since that’s not how we worship YHWH, then if you do make a statue of something and bow down to it, then even if you *mean* to be worshipping YHWH, you’re committing idolatry. To wit: the golden calf.

(If you thought the golden calf was about apostasy, worshipping some god other than YHWH, just give me a few weeks to get there and I’ll happily disabuse you of that notion.)