Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image. — The two main clauses of the second commandment are to be read together, so as to form one sentence: “Thou shalt not make to thee any graven image, &c., so as to worship it.” (See the explanation of Josephus, Ant. Jud., iii. 5, § 5: ‘Ο δεύτερος λóγος κελεύει μηδένος εἰκόνα ζώον ποιήσαντας προσκυνεῖν.) It was not until the days of Hebrew decline and degeneracy that a narrow literalism pressed the words into an absolute prohibition of the arts of painting and sculpture (Philo, De Oraculis, § 29). Moses himself sanctioned the cherubic forms above the mercy-seat, the brazen serpent, and the lilies and pomegranates of the golden candlestick. Solomon had lions on the steps of his throne, oxen under his “molten sea,” and palm-trees, flowers, and cherubim on the walls of the Temple, “within and without” (1 Kings 6:29). What the second commandment forbade was the worship of God under a material form. It asserted the spirituality of Jehovah. While in the rest of the ancient world there was scarcely a single nation or tribe which did not “make to itself” images of the gods, and regard the images themselves with superstitious veneration, in Judaism alone was this seductive practice disallowed. God would have no likeness made of Him, no representation that might cloud the conception of His entire separation from matter, His purely spiritual essence.
In heaven above... in the earth beneath... in the water under the earth. — Comp. Genesis 1:1-7. The triple division is regarded as embracing the whole material universe. In the Egyptian idolatry images of all three kinds were included.