On The Second Commandment

We often picture ancient Israel as being very legalistic about the Law. The Law had one meaning, and everyone knew what that meaning was, and you had to follow it by the letter if you were to receive salvation. Everyone had the same understanding of proper worship or Yahweh, and a person was judged by how well they performed that worship. But in point of fact, there were many debated issues within the law, and different Jews held different positions on what this or that part of the Law actually meant, and how it should be lived out. Take something that we all may believe to be clear, hard and fast: the injunction against idolatry. In point of fact different Israelites had different positions on what the second commandment actually meant, and your attitude towards it differed based on where you lived.

When Israel split into two kingdoms, the North and South started to diverge in styles and forms of worship. For instance, since the South was the location of Solomon's Temple, it was no longer possible for the Northern Tribes to worship there. The Northern Tribes had always had a more diffuse sense of God's location in worship. In the North, it was emphasized that God was EVERYWHERE and so there could be altars outside of Solomon's Temple where worship could rightly take place. Actually, there were people who held to this position in the south as well, but eventually they were oppressed and worship was centralized solely in Solomon's Temple. But in the North, this never took place. Nevertheless, there was a center of worship that eventually became more important than all the others. Shechem had been a traditional center of worship during the time of the Judges, and had some importance even during the time of the Patriarchs in Genesis. It was here that the Northern Tribes set up their most important holy shrine (1 Kings 12).

At that Shrine, we know there was the image of two bulls set up to represent El (their name for Yahweh). And in fact there is much evidence that among the Northern Tribes, it was thought that it was proper to represent El with an image of a bull or two bulls (bulls were symbols of power for many ancient peoples). Now note, the Northern Kingdom was not worshipping this as a god beside El or instead of Him, but this statues represented The One True God.

Some passages in the Bible, which is made up of scriptures collected in the south, try to gloss over this by painting statue of the bull as some extra god over and above Yahweh (1 Kings 12). But there are places in the text that betray the fact that this was not what was going on, and in fact we have good archeological evidence that differ from the 1 Kings 12 account. In point of fact, all the religious reformers and prophets seem to accept the bulls as fact, and never chide the Northern Kingdom for setting them up. In point of fact the only focus for Elijah and the other prophets mentioned in 1 Kings is the worship of other gods, which is an innovation that came later than the setting up of the bulls.

Simply put, in the North images representing El were not considered idolatrous. For them the second commandment was setting up an image that draws worship away from El. So long as a image did not do this, it was not illegal. The South thought that any attempt to contain or represent God in an image was inherently sinful, and so they were stricter about the second commandment. You see the evidence of this theological debate in the 'seams' of some of the early books of the Bible, places where the written scripture betrays its oral sources. In Exodus 32, the creation of the Golden Calf is at first painted as an attempt to set up a god over and against Yahweh (Exodus 32:1), but when Aaron announces the calf to the people he specifically calls it Yahweh (32:4-5). This is probably the writer actually editing the received oral tradition, which painted the dedication of the calf as a good thing. Since the writer was of the Southern Tribes, he could not abide a tradition that painted this act as something good or right. Notice the parallel of the language of Exodus 32:1-6 and 1 Kings 12:25-33.

The question facing us is what is more important: focusing on worship of Yahweh, or focusing on the idea that whatever Yahweh IS, is beyond any particular human image or thought about Him. Is it recognizing the transcendence of God, or worshipping the correct God, that is more important.

I bring this issue up for several reasons. First, we still have this argument today. Most protestants accuse Roman Catholics of idolatry for their focus on icons. Many are very hard on Roman Catholics for just this reason. It is important to note that this argument goes way, way back, and the Bible is not absolutely consistent on the matter of who is right. Second, it is important to paint that debate in it's proper theological context. Further, it is important for us to realize that the Hebrew/Jewish faith was a diverse faith, lively and full of debate, going a long way back. We need to stop painting Judaism as iconoclastic or hard and fast. It was a living religion of argument and dialectic. A lot of those ancient arguments still influence us today, and we would do well to be aware that the Bible itself is in many ways a collection of documents of various people discussing what lessons we should pull from God's self-revelation. God reveals Himself, it is the people who write it down. How and what they write down is supremely important. We would do well to learn more about it.