You shall make no idols nor graven images, neither raise you up a standing image, neither shall you set up any image of stone in your land, to bow down unto it: for I am the LORD your God.
Read Chapter 26
George Leo Haydock
AD 1849
To adore it. This explains the prohibition of making graven things The Protestants translate as usual, "Ye shall make you no idols, nor graven image, neither rear ye up a standing image, neither shall ye set up any image of stone in your land to bow down unto it. "They seem terribly afraid of images, as if they were all idols. See Exodus xx. 4. (Haydock)
Pillars. Hebrew mattseba, "statue, or monument. "Such were erected by Jacob, Josue, and even by Moses himself, without any offence or danger of idolatry, Genesis xxviii. 8 and Josue iv. 4 and Exodus xxiv. 4. Apuleius (Flor.) makes mention, among other species of superstition, "of a stone anointed, and of an altar crowned with flowers. "
The stone, which is here condemned, is one set up "for adoration. "(Onkelos)
Hebrew, "a stone of sight "placed on some eminence, or on the high roads. Strabo, (xvii.) speaking of those which he had seen in Egypt along the roads, says, "they are lofty, polished, and almost like a sphere, some 12 feet i...
For this reason, in order to root out the materials of idolatry, God’s law proclaims, “You shall not make an idol”; and by adding, “Nor the likeness of any thing that is in heaven or in the earth or in the sea,” it utterly forbade such crafts to the servants of God. Enoch had anticipated this law when he prophesied that the demons and the spirits of the rebellious angels would turn to idolatry every element and property of the universe, everything which heaven and sea and earth contain, to be consecrated as a god against God. So it is that human error worships everything but the very Creator of everything. Their images are idols; the consecration of images is idolatry. Whatever sin idolatry commits must be put down to all the makers of all the idols. –.
