What Is Idolatry? Graven Images Explained

Right after “You shall have no other gods before me,” the commandments forbid something more specific:

You shall not make for yourselves an idol, nor any image of anything that is in the heavens above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: you shall not bow yourself down to them, nor serve them.

Exodus 20:4–5

The King James Version calls it a “graven image.” “Graven” is the old English word for carved: the Hebrew pesel means an image cut from wood or stone. In the ancient world a god was usually present through such an image. You fed it, clothed it, carried it in procession and bowed to it. The commandment refuses all of that for the God of Israel.

The short answer: idolatry is worshiping anything other than God, or worshiping God through an image made to stand in for him. The commandment against graven images forbids making images to bow down to and serve. It does not forbid art: God himself ordered carved figures for the tabernacle. Christians agree that only God may be worshiped, but they differ over whether images of Christ and the saints belong in churches. It is the second commandment for most Protestants and the Orthodox; Catholics and Lutherans include it in the first. (Catholic vs Protestant Ten Commandments explains why.) For all ten, see The Ten Commandments: What Each One Means.

Moses later reminded Israel why the ban mattered. At Sinai they heard God, but they never saw him:

Take therefore good heed to yourselves, for you saw no kind of form on the day that the LORD spoke to you in Horeb out of the middle of the fire.

Deuteronomy 4:15

God revealed himself in words, not in a shape. Any image would have to be invented, and an invented God is a smaller one: something you can carry, place and manage. That is exactly what happened within weeks of Sinai, when Israel made a golden calf and called it the god who had brought them out of Egypt (see Why Did Moses Break the Tablets?).

The Psalms point out what idols cannot do, and what they do to the people who make them:

Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands. They have mouths, but they don’t speak. They have eyes, but they don’t see.

Psalm 115:4–5

A few verses later comes the warning: “Those who make them will be like them; yes, everyone who trusts in them” (115:8). We become like what we worship. There is a deeper reason too. God had already made an image of himself: “God created man in his own image” (Genesis 1:27). Human beings are the only image of God the Bible allows, and the New Testament says the full image has now been shown in Christ, “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15).

If the commandment banned every image, the Bible would contradict itself within a few chapters. God told Moses to make two golden cherubim for the lid of the ark (Exodus 25:18) and to weave cherubim into the tabernacle curtains. Solomon’s temple was carved with cherubim, palm trees and flowers (1 Kings 6:29). In the wilderness God even told Moses to make a bronze serpent, so that anyone bitten who looked at it would live (Numbers 21:8–9).

That serpent shows where the line was. Centuries later the people were burning incense to it, so King Hezekiah broke it in pieces (2 Kings 18:4). The same object was obedience in one century and idolatry in another. What changed was not the bronze but what people did with it.

So the commandment does not forbid painting, sculpture or photography. It forbids two things: making an image to represent God and worship him through it, and bowing to any created thing as if it were divine. “You shall not bow yourself down to them, nor serve them” is the heart of it. That is also why Paul could tell the philosophers of Athens that “we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold, or silver, or stone, engraved by art and design of man” (Acts 17:29).

This is where Christians genuinely disagree, and each tradition has thought hard about it:

• Catholic. Statues and images of Christ, Mary and the saints are honored but not worshiped. The Catechism, following the Second Council of Nicaea in 787, says “the honor rendered to an image passes to its prototype”: respect shown to a picture goes to the person it depicts, as with a photograph of someone you love. Worship belongs to God alone (Catechism §2131–2132).
• Orthodox. Icons are central to worship. John of Damascus argued in the eighth century that God could not be pictured until he became visible in Jesus; after the Incarnation, painting Christ confesses that he truly took on flesh.
• Lutheran. Luther kept crucifixes and altar paintings as reminders and teaching aids, while rejecting any idea of worshiping them.
• Reformed and many evangelicals. Images of God, including of Christ, do not belong in worship. The Heidelberg Catechism says God wants his people taught by the living preaching of his Word, not by images. A plain cross, without the figure of Christ, is common in these churches.

Underneath the disagreement is real agreement. No Christian tradition teaches that a statue or painting may be worshiped, and all of them read the same warning at the end of John’s first letter:

Little children, keep yourselves from idols.

1 John 5:21

Most readers will never be tempted to bow to a carved statue. But the commandment still has work to do, because the instinct behind idols is very much alive: the wish for a god we can see, use and control.

Two modern forms are worth naming. The first is the shrunken God: a picture of God we have carved in our minds to agree with us, approve our plans and never ask anything hard. It is an image of God, and it has replaced God. The second is the substitute: good things such as money, success, a relationship or our own image that receive the trust and sacrifice only God should. Paul calls covetousness “idolatry” (Colossians 3:5), and that second form is the subject of What Does ‘No Other Gods Before Me’ Mean?

A few questions help bring idols into the open:

• When I picture God, does he ever surprise me or correct me?
• What do I look to for security when things go wrong?
• What would I find it hardest to give up if God asked?
• Do the objects of my faith (a cross, an icon, a Bible on the shelf) point me to God, or have they become lucky charms?

Those who make them will be like them; yes, everyone who trusts in them.

Psalm 115:8

The good news runs the other way too. If we become like what we worship, then worshiping the living God slowly remakes us into the image we were created to bear.

What is a graven image?

A graven image is a carved image, from the old English word “grave,” to carve. The Hebrew word pesel in Exodus 20:4 means an idol cut from wood or stone. The commandment forbids making such images in order to bow down to them and serve them as gods.

What is idolatry in the Bible?

Idolatry is giving worship, trust or devotion that belongs to God to anything else: a carved image, another god, or a created thing such as money or power. The Bible also counts worshiping the true God through an image as idolatry, as with the golden calf (Exodus 32).

Is it a sin to have a statue of Jesus or Mary?

Christians answer differently. Catholics and the Orthodox see statues and icons as honoring the person depicted, not as objects of worship, which they reject. Many Protestant churches avoid images of Christ in worship. All agree that worshiping any statue would be a sin.

Is wearing a cross idolatry?

Not in itself. A cross is a reminder of Christ’s death, not an object of worship, and almost all Christian traditions use it. It would become idolatry only if the cross itself were trusted for protection or worshiped, the way the bronze serpent was in 2 Kings 18:4.

Which commandment is about idols?

For most Protestants and the Orthodox, “You shall not make for yourself an idol” is the second commandment. Catholics and Lutherans include it in the first, and Jewish tradition joins it with “no other gods” as the second. The words are the same in every Bible (Exodus 20:4–6; Deuteronomy 5:8–10).