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I. WHAT IS STRICTLY AND PROPERLY PROHIBITED IN THIS COMMANDMENT? It is quite manifest that the prohibitory statute relates exclusively to religion — to such images as were made to be "worshipped and bowed down to" - nothing else and nothing more. They were not only to have no other gods besides Jehovah, but were not to worship Jehovah Himself under any similitudes.

1. Such representations of the true God as are here interdicted were probably the origin of the whole idolatrous system. The Second Commandment, I apprehend, ought to be regarded both as a prohibition of what in itself was wrong; and, at the same time as a guard to the first, that they might not only be kept from embracing directly the idolatries of the surrounding countries, but also from introducing a practice in the worship of their own Jehovah which tended to lead them ultimately into the same errors.

2. The commandment was evidently designed to cherish just conceptions of the spiritual nature of Jehovah, and of the corresponding spirituality of the worship He required.

3. Spiritual conceptions of God's nature are connected with spiritual conceptions of His worship. The awfulness of felt incomprehensibility is an impression, in regard to the Infinite Spirit — the great object of our worship, incomparably more desirable and beneficial, than one of gross material familiarity. There is sublimity in it. And there is in it the impression of constant nearness. Whereas when the worship is associated with material emblems, the mind, from the force of habit, becomes incapable of realising the presence of the Deity when the emblem with which that presence is associated is absent.

II. THE REASON ANNEXED TO THIS COMMANDMENT.

1. What is meant by Jehovah when He designates Himself "a jealous God"?

2. The manner in which this Divine jealousy operates, or manifests itself. "Visiting the iniquities."(1) The "visiting of the iniquities of the fathers upon the children" formed no part, nor was it at all a principle, of the judicial law in Israel. On the contrary, it was peremptorily interdicted (Deuteronomy 24:16; 2 Kings 14:6). It was Jehovah Himself, in His own judicial and providential administration, that was to exemplify the principle in its actual application.

(2) If Jehovah retained the principle and the application of it in His own hands, this shows it to have been a principle that could admit of being entrusted to none but Himself. He alone, the omniscient God, was capable of distinguishing in what cases it would, without a violation of equity, be put in practice.

(3) Judgments and corrections of a national description, if they were to be executed at all, could not, in the nature of things, be executed otherwise. They unavoidably involved the children of the present generation; and, if continued for a series of successive years, involved all those of the generations following.

(4) There were cases, they were frequent indeed, in which the children themselves persisted in the sins of their fathers.

(5) It appears to be on this principle that Jehovah reasons with His ancient people, in the eighteenth chapter of the Book of Ezekiel, and vindicates His procedure from their capricious and sullen objections to it. In the spirit of pride, and dissatisfaction, and self-vindication, they were laying their own sufferings to the door of their fathers' sins. But Jehovah puts it to their consciences whether, on the supposition of the sins of their fathers being put out of the account, and His "judging them after their own sins," their sufferings, as His judicial visitation, would be removed or lightened.

(6) There are still cases remaining, and in them lies the principal difficulty, in which the innocent appear to suffer with the guilty; unoffending children with their criminal parents; families with their guilty heads (Joshua 7:24, 25; Numbers 16:27-34, etc.). In regard to these, let the following considerations be attended to: — First, the retribution must be viewed as confined to the present life. Secondly, the number actually involved in the sin and its personal guilt, it is, in such instances as those referred to, difficult for us to ascertain — how far, in each of the two cited, for example, the wives, the sons, and the daughters, and others took part themselves, directly or indirectly, in the crime. We know that Ahab was stirred up by Jezebel; so might Achan by his wife, and so might Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. Thirdly, when little children suffered, who could take no part in the trespass, and contract no personal guilt, it was in their case only temporal death coming upon them in another way and at an earlier time than it might otherwise have come.

(7) It may further be observed, that the declaration is in harmony with numberless facts in the ordinary administration of Divine providence. How often do the vices of intemperance, incontinence, and extravagance entail disease and misery on a man's immediate and even more distant offspring!

(8) How striking and delightful the contrast between the extent, respectively, of the visitation of iniquity and the showing of mercy. To all without exception — individually, who "love Him and keep His commandments," He "showeth mercy." But the contrast is between the third and fourth generation on the one side, and the thousandth on the other. The contrast is designed to intimate and impress the Divine delight in mercy.

III. THE IDOLATRY, OR RATHER THE IMAGE WORSHIP, OF THE SO-CALLED CHRISTIAN CHURCH. It is very strange, and shows the inconsistency of error, and how "hard bestead" it sometimes is for something to say for itself, that the setting up of the brazen serpent has been cited as an instance of reverence due to images, as if the command to the Israelites to look to it had been a command of worship to the object looked at. The best reply to this is simply to point to what became of the brazen serpent; what was done to it for the very reason of its having become an object of idolatrous reverence and superstitious reliance.

(R. Wardlaw, D. D.)

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KJV: Thou shalt not make thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters beneath the earth:

WEB: "You shall not make an engraved image for yourself, [nor] 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: