• The second commandment:

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.
You shall not bow down to them or serve them,
for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God,
     visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children
     to the third and fourth generation
     of those who hate me,
     but showing steadfast love to thousands of those
     who love me and keep my commandments.

Question 96: What does God require in the second commandment?

Answer 96: We are not to make an image of God in any way,
                   nor to worship him in any other manner
                   than he has commanded in his Word.

Question 97: May we then not make any image at all?

Answer 97: God cannot and may not
                          be visibly portrayed in any way.
                   Creatures may be portrayed,
                          but God forbids us
                          to make or have any images of them
                          in order to worship them
                          or to serve God through them.

According to the first commandment, you cannot have other gods and according to the second, you cannot have images to worship them. That is not the same thing twice. The second commandment is not so much about other gods or their images, but about images of the LORD. He specifically commands here that one should not make images of him in order to worship them.

The “carved image” was sculpted from wood or chiselled from stone, but cast or forged images were equally forbidden.¹ Furthermore, every conceivable form of images was strictly forbidden. One had the choice of the whole cosmos with its three regions: the heaven above, the earth beneath, and the water under the earth.² The heavens offered examples of great birds, the earth of land animals, and the sea of fish.³

In short, God forbids here any manufacture of images from whatever material and in whatever form.⁴

Why Images of Gods?⤒🔗

What would move the Israelites to make an image of the LORD? To understand this somewhat, one needs to know what people in that ancient world intended with such an image of gods.

Perhaps surprisingly, pagans generally did not see in the image of their god a photographic representation of his figure. In Rome, for example, a mother goddess (Cybele) was imported from Galatia. Images of her are known that depict her as a beautifully dressed and crowned lady. But what Rome had actually imported from Galatia was a bare meteorite rock. It was believed that she had come down from heaven in this rock. Therefore she was present in that stone. Apparently it was not the intention to make a true image of the deity, such as you find of famous people in a wax museum.

Images or statues were not so much intended to see their gods as it was to influence or to manipulate them. Gods were haunting everywhere with their mysterious powers. That is why people tried to make contact with them through a statue of the gods. An image caused them to be approachable and above all controllable. By means of sacrifices and other ceremonial methods people tried to please the gods and force them to do what they wanted.⁵ The worship of images had the appearance of religion but was actually intended to force the gods into serving humans.

To clarify, we can think of a miller and his windmill. The wind blows uselessly and elusively across the land until the sails of the mill catch it. The wind that has been captured in this way has to do what the miller wants: either to cut wood, to grind flour, drain water or generate electricity. Just as such a mill enables the miller to capture and harness the power of the wind, so the statue of the gods enabled people to manipulate the elusive gods.

It is striking how openly we encounter this pagan conception in the history of Israel.

Golden Calves←⤒🔗

A few months after their liberation from Egypt, the Israelites worship a golden calf. They are unstoppable. They regard that calf as an image of the LORD, and therefore not as if representing another god.⁶ The immediate occasion for their need of that image is the fact that Moses has been absent for so long on Mount Sinai. He maintained for them the daily contact with Yahweh. When he stopped showing up, the LORD, in their view, was no longer approachable and accessible. That caused panic. That is why they demand of Aaron: “make a god for us who shall go out before us” (Ex. 32:1). They are not thinking of “gods” in the plural, as some translations erroneously have it, but of the One who “brought them out of the land of Egypt” (Ex. 32:4).

It is not as if they want to get rid of him, but rather they are afraid that he will want to get rid of them. That is why they, on their part, make an attempt to force him to remain in their midst and to travel along with them. That is the purpose of the image. They are prepared to pay a fortune in gold to have him return to their ranks. So great is their desire to have him with them!

They did not wait carefully to see if the LORD approved. Immediately it becomes a big celebration. That is how confident they are of what they are doing. It is as if they have been reunited with the LORD. The perceived gap has been bridged.

Later, King Jeroboam of the kingdom of the ten tribes reasons in a similar manner. He would rather not see his citizens cross the border to go to the temple of Jerusalem. Therefore, he orders that two golden bull calves are made in his own country. He calls them “the gods who brought you up out of the land of Egypt”. With that plural “gods” he must have meant that the two statues each separately represented the one Yahweh.⁷ Thus Jeroboam wanted to force the LORD to live in their land from now on — in addition to the “foreign” city of Jerusalem.

The Seriousness of This Offense←⤒🔗

Why are people not allowed to depict God? Is it because no one knows what he looks like? That is not the main motive. Indeed, Israel never saw a “figure” of God, not even at Mount Sinai. Moses, on the other hand, saw “the form of the LORD” on a regular basis.⁸ Yet he does not want to be portrayed. Why not?

We have already seen that people used an image of the gods to manipulate the whimsical gods for their own purposes. After all, you did not know what they might do. How very different is the LORD! Moses exclaims: “For what great nation is there that has a god so near to it as the LORD our God, whenever we call upon him?” Indeed Israel did not get to see his form. “You heard the sound of his words,” says Moses, but he does not mean that in a negative sense. For “did any people ever hear the voice of a god ... as you have heard?⁹ He made a covenant, gave crystal clear promises, voiced ten clear demands, and chiselled them into stone tablets with his own hands¹⁰  What god ever made a covenant with his people? Gods kept a low profile and kept their mouths shut. That is why the LORD regards it as an insult when people compare him to such dumb gods.¹¹

It is in this light that we should see the sin with the golden calf. The wrong thing was not that they wanted the LORD to be close to them, but that they acted as if he were far away! They approached him like an inscrutable sphinx that you can only approach and call upon through an image. Whoever treats him in this way despises and forgets his covenant.¹² This is why he had no sympathy or understanding for their pagan practice to approach him and sought to destroy them.¹³

When it comes down to it, a violation of the second commandment is also a violation of the first. Any self-conceived image of God is in fact another god. That is why Moses says that his people have “made themselves gods of gold”. The serving of images is always the start of idolatry.

Modern Images of Gods←⤒🔗

No one today is even remotely thinking of creating a “carved image” for God. What has not disappeared, however, is the temptation to manipulate him in such a way that he meets man’s own expectations. This is achieved by creating a notion of him and worshipping it as if it is God himself. Such a conception is inevitably tailored to one’s own thoughts about God. Such notions about God do not come from the Bible, but from people’s own brains, even if they make reference to biblical texts. It is characteristic of an imaginary god that he thinks about everything in the same way as the designer himself. For example, anyone who considers it inconceivable that God would send his Son to die for sins ends up with a theology that rejects the doctrine of atonement through satisfaction.

It makes little difference whether such an image of God is made of wood or gold or is based on our own ideas. The Old Testament already proves this. Consider, for instance, Job’s friends. According to them, Job’s disaster was a direct punishment from God for some concealed wrongdoing. In eight forceful speeches they set forth their notion of God. They did so with conviction, yet God’s judgment was devastating: “you have not spoken of me what is right”.¹⁴ They had replaced him with their own notions. Therefore, he has as little understanding for their reflections and considerations as he did for the making of the golden calf. In both situations his anger became ignited! And as Moses had to pray for the people, so Job prays for his friends.¹⁵

When Jesus is on earth, no longer does any Jew kneel before an image of wood or gold. That seems like tremendous progress — and they think so themselves. They compare favourably with their fathers who killed the prophets. In reality, they are filling up the measure of their fathers.¹⁶ Never before has God been so close to them as when Christ was on earth. Whoever saw him saw the Father.¹⁷ Unfortunately, more stubbornly than ever these Jews were under the spell of a self-made image of God. According to this image, there was nothing left for them but to compensate for their transgressions by doing good works. This was the core of their religion. Subsequently there was no place for Christ in their opinion about God. It proves how catastrophic the violation of this commandment can be. It alienated them from the true God, while they thought they were doing him a service. No other commandment is violated with as much religious conviction as this one. In our time, the image of God is modified to the demands of the modern sense of living. No one is immune from this. By nature, everyone wants God to be the way he would like him to be. Only an unconditional belief that we see his true face in the gospel can protect us from this temptation.

A Jealous God←⤒🔗

The LORD calls himself jealous. In saying this he reveals something of his inner self. He is not made of marble. He is not indifferent to how people treat him. He is sensitive to the way they treat him. He cannot bear it when they pass him by and worship strange gods.¹⁸ Nor can he bear it when people may want to worship him alone, but do so through an image. Then they have violated his covenant and despised his Word. He regards this as so terrible that he calls these people “those who hate me”. They do not consciously hate him. After all, they are actually seeking to make a connection with him, just like Israel by way of that calf, and just like Job’s friends with their impassioned speeches, and no different from the law-abiding Jews of Jesus’ time.¹⁹ They are earnestly engaged in serving and worshipping God, but in their own way. They do not really listen to him in his Word. It is not what he says but what they think of him that determines their view of God. He cannot appreciate that and he will not ignore it. They will find out. He does not consider that everyone is free to serve him in their own way.

The word “jealous” also has another side. As indignant as he is about people with their self-made image of him, so he is moved about those who serve him as he has commanded in his Word. He notes in this their heartfelt love and loyalty. He calls these people “those who love me”. For them also he is a “jealous” God. They too will find out who he is. This should not frighten them, because he also wants “to show that he is who he says he is when people do not short-change him but fear, love and honour him”.²⁰ This touches him so deeply that he likes to respond by showing them his favour.²¹

To Future Generations←⤒🔗

Each person is personally responsible for his own misdeeds.²² God will never present a child with the bill for the wrongs of his father or grandfather. Something else is that parents and educators are co-responsible for the behaviour of the next generation. This is where God addresses all educators. He does so very emphatically in this second commandment. That is because no transgression is so easily taken over by young people as this one. The first parents who received this commandment, unfortunately, knew it from their own experience. How excited their children must have been when they were allowed to go with them to the feast at the golden calf.

A father can be involved in criminal activities. He can never in good conscience recommend such practices to his children. There is a real possibility that they will take little or nothing from him in that respect and be ashamed of him. But religion — even self-centered and self-willed religion — is something parents pass on to their children in earnest as if it is a good thing.

The LORD forbids parents to tell their own stories about him. He disqualifies such an upbringing as “the iniquity of the fathers”. He warns that this iniquity in particular so easily spills over to the next generations.

Parents like to take care of their children’s future. The worst service they can do to their children is to burden them with their self-made image of God. He will “visit”, i.e., repay this iniquity to their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren (the fourth generation). Of course, these children remain personally responsible for their choices. Therefore, the LORD does not say that he automatically punishes all children, but “those who hate me”. These are the ones who deliberately follow in the footsteps of their parents.

Steadfast Love to the Thousandth Generation←⤒🔗

It is natural for parents to take care of their own children, i.e., the second generation. As a rule, that is where it ends. The care for the third generation — their grandchildren — becomes the responsibility of their married children.

In light of this, what God promises here in this commandment is rather surprising. The faithfulness of parents to this commandment turns out to have immeasurable significance for countless generations after them. For the LORD shows his favour to the thousandth, i.e., to the furthest imaginable generation.²³

It is assumed that this thousandth generation will follow the example of the believing parents and ancestors. Unfortunately, many are dropping out. Cain was the first child who undoubtedly received a good upbringing. He heard the gospel from parents who, after all, had themselves lived in paradise. Moreover, God himself spoke to him. None of it helped. He took a different path and dragged many generations along with him. His parents were powerless. Many fathers and mothers have similar bitter experiences. Yet in all their sorrow they may comfort themselves with the promise found in this commandment. For it is only because of this promise that a Christian church still exists today. In proclaiming this commandment, God looked ahead to the thousandth generation. That is far beyond the year 2000. The future of the church is not determined by projections of men, but by this promise that remains valid until the last day.

Question 98: But may images not be tolerated
                      in the churches
                      as “books for the laity”?

Answer 98: No, for we should not be wiser than God.
                   He wants his people to be taught
                         not by means of dumb images
                         but by the living preaching of his Word.

Of course, images of biblical scenes can bring the gospel closer. That is also the advantage of a children’s Bible. The Catechism itself calls the sacraments visible signs. God uses water, bread and wine to make the promise of the gospel understood “more fully” (Answer 66). Therefore, there is no philosophizing here about the best teaching method on the pulpit (whether it is visual or not). The question to be addressed is in what way the living God wants to meet his Christians.

The Living Preaching←⤒🔗

First of all, a line is drawn through the derogatory word “laity”. Lay people belong to a lower order. They are dependent on the so-called clergy. They depend on them to obtain grace. They receive this grace by means of the sacraments. The proclamation of the gospel plays a subordinate role in this. Knowledge of God’s Word is less important.

Before God, however, churchgoers are never “laymen”. That is why the Catechism calls them Christians instead. It is a name of great honour. Christians are prophets, priests and kings. Through Christ they have a direct connection with God and are therefore confidently/personally called his Christians. He does not let them look at “dumb images”. That is not an insult. It is simply true that static images fall short as conveyors of current news. The living proclamation of his Word stands in contrast to the mute image. Over against the “books of the laity”, the Catechism therefore does not merely present the books of the Bible, but the preaching of his Word. Through this, God speaks to them in their concrete situation. As they listen to ancient histories of Scripture, God and his Son come to them in those ancient accounts.²⁴

That is the way the living God meets his Christians, and how they meet him.