(312) Do not make a graven image; neither make it yourself nor have it made by others. "You shall not make for yourself a carved image--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 nor serve them. For I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God." (Exodus 20:4-5) This, of course, is the second of the "ten commandments." The point is not who makes the "graven image" or for whom, but rather its intended use. Images of created things are not to be employed as objects of worship. Things that would immediately pop into the minds of the Israelites hearing these words include the sun-god and moon-god symbols of their former Egyptian hosts, the golden calf they had merrily constructed while Mo was up on the mountain receiving this very law (oops), and the fish-god images of the Dagon worshippers they were soon to encounter in the land of Canaan.

The word translated "jealous" is qana, from a root which means "zeal." The Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament says, "It may prove helpful to think of ‘zeal’ as the original sense from which derived the notions ‘zeal for another’s property’ equals ‘envy,’ and ‘zeal for one’s own property’ equals ‘jealousy.’" Thus Yahweh was reminding the Israelites that they were His own set-apart people. They belonged to Him. And if we today are His children, He is similarly "jealous" over us.

(313) Do not make any figures for ornament, even if they are not worshipped. "You shall not make anything to be with Me--gods of silver or gods of gold you shall not make for yourselves. An altar of earth you shall make for Me, and you shall sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, your sheep and your oxen. In every place where I record My name I will come to you, and I will bless you. And if you make Me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stone; for if you use your tool on it, you have profaned it." (Exodus 20:23-25) Maimonides has taken the "no graven images" ball and run with it, forbidding (as the Muslims do) any image of anything for any purpose. Yes, representations of any object of worship--even of Yahweh Himself, if that were possible--were strictly and specifically forbidden. And it’s clear from the passage that Yahweh doesn’t want us to try to impress Him with our skill and workmanship, the best of which--let’s face it--is pathetically anemic when compared with the glories of His creation.

That being said, only a few chapters after the ten commandments, Yahweh is seen selecting a man (named Bezaleel--meaning "in the shadow of God") because of, among other things, his "filling with the Spirit of God...in all manner of workmanship to design artistic works." And He is heard instructing Israel to place specific decorative "images" on the mercy seat: "And you shall make two cherubim of gold; of hammered work you shall make them at the two ends of the mercy seat. Make one cherub at one end, and the other cherub at the other end; you shall make the cherubim at the two ends of it of one piece with the mercy seat. And the cherubim shall stretch out their wings above, covering the mercy seat with their wings, and they shall face one another; the faces of the cherubim shall be toward the mercy seat." (Exodus 25:18-20) Further, the instructions on the construction of the tabernacle are peppered with references to "graven images" the Israelites are supposed to make--bowls shaped like "almond blossoms" on the golden lampstand; pictures of cherubim (what does a cherub look like, anyway?) woven into the curtains; golden bells and pomegranates sewn onto the hem of Aaron’s robe, etc.

So Yahweh clearly isn’t prohibiting all graphic or three-dimensional representations, but rather the worship of them. The Jews, to their credit, seem to have this one down pat, though as usual, they’re more restrictive than God Himself, which is pretty scary. It’s the Catholics who have it all wrong. The late pope John Paul II declared, "A mysterious ‘presence’ of the transcendent Prototype seems as it were to be transferred to the sacred image.... The devout contemplation of such an image thus appears as a real and concrete path of purification of the soul of the believer...because the image itself, blessed by the priest...can in a certain sense, by analogy with the sacraments, actually be a channel of divine grace." (Quoted by Dave Hunt in A Woman Rides the Beast.) In other words (in case you couldn’t follow the slippery religious gobbledygook), "A picture of Jesus--if a Catholic priest blesses it--is as good as the real thing." Not according to Exodus, big guy.