Idol
The idol in Scripture is a manufactured object that human hands fashion from gold, silver, wood, or stone, and then bow down to as a god. The polemic against it runs from the Decalogue forward: the prohibition is absolute, the workmanship is absurd, the object is mute, and the prayers offered to it return unanswered. Within Israel, the same polemic doubles as a charge of covenant breach.
The Forbidden Manufacture
The first form of the prohibition is direct: "You will not make for yourself a graven image, nor any likeness [of any thing] that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth" (Ex 20:4). The companion clause closes off the molten variant: "You will make yourself no molten gods" (Ex 34:17). Leviticus repeats it as a positive statute of Yahweh's lordship: "You⁺ will not make yourselves idols, neither will you⁺ rear yourselves up a graven image, or a pillar, neither will you⁺ place any figured stone in your⁺ land, to bow down to it: for I am Yahweh your⁺ God" (Le 26:1).
Deuteronomy grounds the same prohibition in covenant memory. "Take heed to yourselves, or else you⁺ will forget the covenant of [the Speech of] Yahweh your⁺ God, which he made with you⁺, and make a graven image in the form of anything which [the Speech of] Yahweh your God has forbidden you" (De 4:23). Forgetting the covenant and fabricating a graven image are the same act in two phases. Moses warns again that "your⁺ heart will be deceived, and you⁺ will turn aside, and serve other gods, and worship them" (De 11:16), and that no pillar is to be set up "which Yahweh your God hates" (De 16:22). The patriarchal version of the same command is Jacob's at Bethel: "Put away the foreign gods that are among you⁺, and purify yourselves, and change your⁺ garments" (Ge 35:2). The New Testament repeats the boundary in one line: "[My] little children, guard yourselves from idols" (1Jn 5:21).
Yahweh holds the prerogative himself: "I am Yahweh, that is my name; and my glory I will not give to another, neither my praise to graven images" (Isa 42:8).
The Golden Calf and Its Successors
The first sustained narrative of an idol's manufacture is the calf at Sinai. The people surrender their gold first: "And all the people broke off the golden rings which were in their ears, and brought them to Aaron" (Ex 32:3). Aaron then "fashioned it with a graving tool, and made it [into] a molten calf: and they said, These are your gods, O Israel, which brought you up out of the land of Egypt" (Ex 32:4). Moses' destruction of the object inverts every step of its making: "And he took the calf which they had made, and burned it with fire, and ground it to powder, and strewed it on the water, and made the sons of Israel drink of it" (Ex 32:20). Deuteronomy's retrospect calls this "a molten calf" by which Israel "had turned aside quickly out of the way" (De 9:16); the post-exilic memory is the same: "Yes, when they had made themselves a molten calf, and said, This is your God who brought you up out of Egypt, and had wrought great provocations" (Ne 9:18). The Psalter compresses it: "They made a calf in Horeb, And worshiped a molten image" (Ps 106:19).
Jeroboam reproduces the calf at the founding of the northern kingdom: "For this reason the king took counsel, and made two calves of gold; and he said to them, It is too much for you⁺ to go up to Jerusalem: here are your gods, O Israel, which brought you up out of the land of Egypt" (1Ki 12:28). The phrase that Aaron used is the phrase that Jeroboam uses. The chronicler ties his priesthood to the same image: "and he appointed for himself priests for the high places, and for the he-goats, and for the calves which he had made" (2Ch 11:15). The northern kingdom's later record is summed up in this idiom: "the golden calves that were in Beth-el, and that were in Dan" (2Ki 10:29). At its end, "they forsook all the commandments of Yahweh their God, and made themselves molten images, even two calves, and made an Asherah, and worshiped all the host of heaven, and served Baal" (2Ki 17:16). Hosea sees the calves headed into exile: "The neighbor of Samaria will be in terror for the calves of Beth-aven" (Ho 10:5).
Silver and Gold
The prophets characterize the idol again and again by its material. "Their idols are silver and gold, The work of man's hands. They have mouths, but they don't speak; They have eyes, but they don't see; They have ears, but they don't hear; They have noses, but they don't smell; They have hands, but they don't handle; They have feet, but they don't walk; Neither do they speak through their throat" (Ps 115:4-7). The companion psalm repeats the catalogue: "The idols of the nations are silver and gold, The work of man's hands. They have mouths, but they don't speak; They have eyes, but they don't see; They have ears, but they don't hear; Neither is there any breath in their mouths" (Ps 135:15-17). The point is the inertness of the material: a thing that men have weighed out cannot answer.
Hosea names the same material as the indictment of the northern kingdom: "of their silver and their gold they have made for themselves idols, that they may be cut off" (Ho 8:4). Hosea returns to it: "And now they sin more and more, and have made for themselves molten images of their silver, even idols according to their own understanding, all of them the work of the craftsmen" (Ho 13:2). Isaiah turns the material into the matter of repentance: "In that day man will cast away their idols of silver, and their idols of gold, which have been made for them to worship, to the moles and to the bats" (Isa 2:20); "For in that day they will cast away every man his idols of silver, and his idols of gold, which your⁺ own hands have made to you⁺ for a sin" (Isa 31:7). Even the overlay is renounced: "And you⁺ will defile the overlaying of your graven images of silver, and the plating of your molten images of gold: you will cast them away as a menstrual cloth; you will say to it, Get away from here" (Isa 30:22). The seer of the Apocalypse uses the same catalogue at the close of the canon: "the idols of gold, and of silver, and of bronze, and of stone, and of wood; which can neither see, nor hear, nor walk" (Re 9:20).
Wood and Stone
When the material is not metal it is wood or stone, and the polemic intensifies because the gods are then indistinguishable from common matter. Moses warns Israel that in exile "you⁺ will serve gods, the work of man's hands, wood and stone, which neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell" (De 4:28). Hezekiah prays the same charge against the gods of the nations Sennacherib has conquered: "and have cast their gods into the fire; for they were no gods, but the work of man's hands, wood and stone; therefore they have destroyed them" (2Ki 19:18; the Isaiah parallel is identical, Isa 37:19). Ezekiel uses "wood and stone" as the formula for cultural assimilation: "We will be as the nations, as the families of the countries, to minister wood and stone" (Eze 20:32).
Isaiah's most extended treatment is also the most ironic, because it follows the wood from the forest into the workshop and onto both the hearth and the altar. "Those who fashion a graven image are all of them vanity; and the things that they delight in will not profit; and their own witnesses don't see, nor know" (Isa 44:9). The blacksmith and the carpenter take their turns: "The blacksmith [makes] an ax, and works in the coals, and fashions it with hammers, and works it with his strong arm: yes, he is hungry, and his strength fails; he drinks no water, and is faint. The carpenter stretches out a line; he marks it out with a pencil; he shapes it with planes, and he marks it out with the compasses, and shapes it after the figure of a man, according to the beauty of man, to dwell in a house" (Isa 44:12-13). The same tree feeds the cooking fire and the altar: "Then it will be for man to burn; and he takes of it, and warms himself; yes, he kindles it, and bakes bread: yes, he makes a god, and worships it; he makes it a graven image, and falls down to it.... And its remnant he makes a god, even his graven image; he falls down to it and worships, and prays to it, and says, Deliver me; for you are my god" (Isa 44:15,17). The polemic ends with a question the worshipper cannot answer: "shall I make its remainder [into] a disgusting thing? Shall I fall down to a piece of wood?" (Isa 44:19). Isaiah elsewhere notes that the man too poor for metal "chooses a tree that will not rot; he seeks to him a skillful workman to set up a graven image, that will not be moved" (Isa 40:20). The image will not be moved because it cannot move.
Prayer Unanswered
A companion strand insists that the idol does not answer when called. The decisive demonstration is on Carmel. "And Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, Choose⁺ one bull for yourselves, and dress it first; for you⁺ are many; and call on the name of your⁺ god, but put no fire under" (1Ki 18:25). They do: "and they took the bull which was given to them, and they dressed it, and called on the name of Baal from morning even until noon, saying, O Baal, hear us. But there was no voice, nor any who answered" (1Ki 18:26). Elijah mocks them — "Cry aloud; for he is a god: either he is musing, or he has gone aside, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he sleeps and must be awakened" (1Ki 18:27) — and the day ends with their self-laceration and silence: "they cried aloud, and cut themselves after their manner with knives and lances, until the blood gushed out on them.... but there was neither voice, nor any to answer, nor any who regarded" (1Ki 18:28-29). Isaiah's oracle on Moab generalizes the pattern: "when Moab presents himself, when he wearies himself on the high place, and will come to his sanctuary to pray, that he will not prevail" (Isa 16:12).
Habakkuk states the principle as a rhetorical question: "What does it profit the graven image, that its maker has graven it; the molten image, even the teacher of lies, that he who fashions its form trusts in it, to make mute idols?" (Hab 2:18). Jeremiah extends the figure: idols "are like a palm-tree, of turned work, and don't speak: they must surely be borne, because they can't go" (Je 10:5). They are not dangerous, because "they can't do evil, neither is it in them to do good" (Je 10:5). Daniel says the same in his rebuke of Belshazzar: the king "praised the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood, and stone, which don't see, nor hear, nor know" (Da 5:23). Paul gives the apostolic statement: when the Corinthians were Gentiles "[you⁺ were] led away to those mute idols, however you⁺ might be led" (1Co 12:2).
Things Offered to Idols
A practical corollary follows: what has been given to an idol is not to be eaten by Yahweh's people. "If you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, who go whoring after their gods and sacrifice to their gods, they will call you. And you will eat of their sacrifice" (Ex 34:15). The danger is participation, not contamination of the food itself, and Paul argues the same way: "Concerning therefore the eating of things sacrificed to idols, we know that no idol is [anything] in the world, and that there is no God but one" (1Co 8:4); but "the things which they sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons, and not to God: and I don't want you⁺ to be partners with demons" (1Co 10:20). The gods named are nothing; the worship to which they belong is not nothing. Deuteronomy already used both registers: Israel's fathers "sacrificed to demons, [which were] not God, To gods that they did not know, To new [gods] that came up of late" (De 32:17).
Coverings, Plunder, and the Snare
Because idols are overlaid with precious metal, the covering itself becomes a temptation in conquest. Moses commands Israel to burn the images and refuse the metal: "The graven images of their gods you⁺ will burn with fire: you will not covet the silver or the gold that is on them, nor take it to you, or else you will be snared in it; for it is disgusting to Yahweh your God" (De 7:25). The covering, Isaiah teaches, is itself to be cast away in the day of repentance (Isa 30:22, quoted above).
High Places, Groves, and Altars
The idol is rarely a solitary object; it stands on a built-up site. The kings of Israel "reared up an altar for Baal in the house of Baal, which he had built in Samaria" (1Ki 16:32), and "made the Asherah" beside it (1Ki 16:33). Jeroboam "made houses of high places, and made priests from among all the people, who were not of the sons of Levi" (1Ki 12:31). Solomon's syncretism "built a high place for Chemosh the detestable thing of Moab, in the mount that is before Jerusalem" (1Ki 11:7). Manasseh "built again the high places which Hezekiah his father had destroyed; and he reared up altars for Baal, and made an Asherah" (2Ki 21:3). Reform reverses every move: Hezekiah "removed the high places, and broke the pillars, and cut down the Asherah" (2Ki 18:4); Josiah "broke in pieces the pillars, and cut down the Asherim, and filled their places with man's bones" (2Ki 23:14). The form of every reform in the historical books is the destruction of the idol's site.
Teraphim
A domestic version of the idol survives at the household level. Rachel "stole the talismans that were her father's" (Ge 31:19); when Laban searched, "Rachel had taken the talismans, and put them in the camel's saddle, and sat on them" (Ge 31:34). Micah in the period of the judges "had a house of gods, and he made an ephod, and talismans, and consecrated one of his sons, who became his priest" (Jg 17:5), and the Danite spies later inquire after this same household assemblage (Jg 18:14). Hosea forecasts a coming season "without sacrifice, and without pillar, and without ephod or talismans" (Ho 3:4) — the talismans dropped along with the legitimate ritual objects.
Heavenly Bodies and Demons
Behind the carved object stands what it stands for. Moses warns against turning to the visible heavens: "lift up your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, even all the host of heaven, you will be drawn away and worship them, and serve them" (De 4:19); the apostate kings in turn "worshiped all the host of heaven, and served Baal" (2Ki 17:16). Ezekiel sees men in the temple court "with their faces toward the east; and they were worshiping the sun toward the east" (Eze 8:16). Zephaniah names the same hilltop worship: "those who worship the host of heaven on the housetops" (Zep 1:5).
The other figure for what stands behind the object is the demon. Leviticus already ties idol-sacrifice to "he-goats, which they go whoring after" (Le 17:7); the Psalter charges Israel with sacrificing "their sons and their daughters to demons" (Ps 106:37); and Paul makes the same equation in 1 Corinthians (1Co 10:20). The Apocalypse closes the canon's idol-polemic with both terms together: men "should not worship demons, and the idols of gold, and of silver, and of bronze, and of stone, and of wood" (Re 9:20).
The Maccabean Crisis
The Antiochene persecution forces the question into a single decision. "And many of Israel consented to his service, and they sacrificed to idols, and profaned the Sabbath" (1Ma 1:43). The decree is to "build altars, and temples, and idols, and to sacrifice swine's flesh, and unclean beasts" (1Ma 1:47), and "they burned incense at the doors of the houses, and in the streets" (1Ma 1:55). At Modin "those from the king who were compelling the apostasy came to the city of Modin, to sacrifice" (1Ma 2:15), and a Jew comes forward "in the sight of all to sacrifice to the idols on the altar in the city of Modin, according to the king's commandment" (1Ma 2:23). Mattathias' answer is the answer of the Deuteronomic and Isaianic strands at once: "Mattathias and his friends went round about, and they threw down the altars" (1Ma 2:45). When the foreigners "laid open the books of the law, in which the nations searched for the likenesses of their idols" (1Ma 3:48), they were treating the text itself the way the prophets accuse them of treating the world. The campaign reaches even the ancient sites: at Azotus "they showed him the temple of Dagon that was burned with fire" (1Ma 11:4). Sirach's summary of Josiah's earlier reform fits the same arc: he "was grieved at their backslidings, And caused the vain abominations to cease" (Sir 49:2).
The Apologetic to the Greeks
The argument the prophets press against Israel returns in Christian apologetic to the pagan reader. The Diognetus letter walks the reader through the same materials: "Is not one a stone, like what we tread on, and one bronze, no better than the vessels forged for our use, and one wood, already decayed, and one silver, needing a man to guard it from being stolen, and one iron, corroded, and one earthen, no more fitting than what is prepared for the most shameful service?" (Gr 2:2). The matter is corruptible and the agents are tradesmen: "Are they not all made by iron and fire? Did not the sculptor form one, the coppersmith another, the silversmith a third, and the potter a fourth?" (Gr 2:3). The verdict: "These [objects] you⁺ call gods, these you⁺ serve as slaves, these you⁺ worship; and you⁺ become altogether like them" (Gr 2:5). The mockery turns on the worshipper's own behavior: "you⁺ much more mock and shamefully treat them, worshiping without a guard those of stone and earth, but shutting up the gold and silver ones at night, and by day setting guards, lest they should be stolen" (Gr 2:7). And on sacrifice: "When you⁺ worship them with blood and fat, you⁺ think you⁺ are honoring them. But if they have touch, you⁺ are actually punishing them. And if they are without touch, [they cannot even respond] — proving [it]" (Gr 2:8). The proof of inertness is the worshipper's own acceptance that it is endured: "the stone tolerates it, for it is without touch. Therefore you⁺ prove it [to be] without touch" (Gr 2:9). The apologist will not let the philosophers escape by abstraction either: "Some of them say God is fire (to which they themselves shall go — this they call God), and some say water, and some other elements created by God. But, indeed, if any one of these words were acceptable, each one of the other creatures might likewise announce itself as God" (Gr 8:2-3).
Vanity and Overthrow
The final word in the prophets is that the whole apparatus will end. "They are vanity, a work of delusion: in the time of their visitation they will perish" (Je 10:15). "Everyone among man has become brutish [and is] without knowledge; every goldsmith is put to shame by his image; for his molten image is falsehood, and there is no breath in them" (Je 51:17). The prophetic future moves through cutting off — "I will cut off your graven images and your pillars out of the midst of you; and you will no more worship the work of your hands" (Mi 5:13) — to a removal that takes the names with the objects: "I will cut off the names of the idols out of the land, and they will no more be remembered; and also I will cause the prophets and the unclean spirit to pass out of the land" (Zec 13:2). What is forbidden in Exodus is, at the close of the prophets, what Yahweh has promised to remove. Paul names the new direction in one phrase: men once "served as slaves to those that by nature are no gods" (Ga 4:8); the idol has been displaced, not by another image, but by the worship of the one who is.