They Are To Remember That Yahweh Is Without Form, And Is A Consuming Fire, And Must Therefore Avoid Making Any Graven Image for Worship Purposes For That Would Be to Adulterate and Misrepresent Yahweh (Deuteronomy 4:15-24).
a Take therefore good heed to yourselves; for you saw no manner of form on the day that Yahweh spoke to you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire (Deuteronomy 4:15).
b Lest you corrupt yourselves, and make yourselves a graven image in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female, of any beast that is on the earth, of any winged bird that flies in the heavens, of anything that creeps on the ground, any fish that is in the water under the earth (Deuteronomy 4:16-18).
c Lest you 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 be drawn away and worship them, and serve them, which Yahweh your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven (Deuteronomy 4:19).
d But Yahweh has taken you, and brought you forth out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt, to be to him a people of inheritance, as at this day (Deuteronomy 4:20).
c Furthermore Yahweh was angry with me for your sakes, and swore that I should not go over the Jordan, and that I should not go in to that good land, which Yahweh your God gives you for an inheritance, but I must die in this land, I must not go over the Jordan. But you shall go over, and possess that good land (Deuteronomy 4:21-22).
b Take heed to yourselves, lest you forget the covenant of Yahweh your God, which he made with you, and make yourselves a graven image in the form of anything which Yahweh your God has forbidden you (Deuteronomy 4:23).
a For Yahweh your God is a devouring fire, a jealous God (Deuteronomy 4:24).
Note that in ‘a' Yahweh spoke without form out of the midst of the fire, and in the parallel Yahweh is a devouring fire. In ‘b' They are not to corrupt themselves by making a grave image of any earthly creature, and in the parallel they are not to forget the covenant by making a graven image in the form of anything forbidden. In ‘c' they are not to lift their eyes to the heavens to worship anything in the heavens, for those things have been allotted to all the peoples under heaven, they are common, while in the parallel the true heavenly One is angry with Moses so that he is excluded from the holy land that Yahweh is giving as an inheritance, the one place on earth that is holy and is exclusive to His people. Central in ‘d' is that Yahweh has delivered His people from the iron furnace, from Egypt (a lesser fire even though painful) to be the people of His inheritance, in order that they might inherit that holy land from which Moses is excluded. For such people to seek to heavenly bodies which are common to man would be to degrade themselves utterly.
‘ Take therefore good heed to yourselves; for you saw no manner of form on the day that Yahweh spoke to you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire. Lest you corrupt yourselves, and make yourselves a graven image in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any beast that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the heavens, the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water under the earth,'
They were especially then to remember that when they had seen Him they had seen no manner of form. All they had seen was glorious, unearthly fire; ethereal, mysterious, indescribable, untouchable, here, there, and everywhere on the mountain. To try to represent Him in any earthly form or art would be to misrepresent Him and to degrade Him. Thus they were to beware that they made no attempt to make any image of Him, of whatever likeness, however symbolic, not of anything in heaven, or on earth, or under the earth, or in the sea. To do so would be to commit a crime so heinous that it was deserving of instant death (Deuteronomy 27:15; compare Deuteronomy 13:6-11; Deuteronomy 5:8-9; Deuteronomy 12:2-4; Leviticus 26:30). Let them then remember that when they saw Yahweh they saw no manner of form.
These verses reflect a knowledge of the traditions behind Genesis 1, and are a reminder thereby that all these things of which men make images are but God's creations, and thus not worthy of worship. To represent God in an image is thus to debase Him and limit Him to what is earthly, reducing His transcendence.
Many gods and goddesses and semi-deities throughout the Ancient Near East were represented as beasts and birds of various kinds, and many as serpents and later we learn of creeping things connected with some forms of religion (e.g. Ezekiel 8:10). For men and women were seeking to affect the world and what was in it by their attention to such deities. They saw them as very much a part, even if a mysterious part, of the world scene.
‘ And lest you 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 be drawn away and worship them, and serve them, which Yahweh your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven.'
Nor when they lifted up their eyes to heaven and saw the majestic lights in the heavens were they to be drawn to worship them. They must remember that those lights are not holy but are for the common use of all men. They were but the sun, moon and stars that He had created, the stars almost as an afterthought (Genesis 1:16). They were not to serve them or to worship them. They were rather to see that they have been created by Yahweh and allotted by Him for every man's benefit throughout the whole world. Religiously speaking there was nothing special about the heavenly bodies. But in contrast Yahweh's people are a holy people to Yahweh their God Who has chosen them to be a special people to himself, above all people who are on the face of the earth (Deuteronomy 7:6). They must therefore only seek to Yahweh. The sun god and the moon god (Job 31:26-27) were worshipped in different parts of the ancient world from time immemorial, and the stars provided a multiplicity of gods. But His people were to worship only the true God.
“The host of heaven.” This is a phrase simply indicating the multitude of lights in the heavens which were like a great army (compare Deuteronomy 17:3; Genesis 2:1; Psalms 33:6; Isaiah 34:4) or the multiplicity of angels. One look at the heavens on a dark night would give this impression. Later Assyria would more specifically worship ‘the host of heaven' (2 Kings 17:16; 2 Kings 21:3; 2 Kings 21:5) but the phrase is one naturally arising from glancing at the night skies and cannot be limited to that (compare Deuteronomy 17:3; 1 Kings 22:19). Contrast in Deuteronomy 17:3 ‘any of the host of heaven' where individual star deities are in mind. The heavenly bodies were worshipped by men as far back as written records go and even before, for they are found pictured in stone. In the early Biblical period interest in the heavens outside Israel was religious and astrological, not astronomical. Thus this simple and accurate description cannot be used as a dating technique, simply through a coincidence of expression. The thought behind it goes back into the mists of time.
“Which Yahweh your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven.” This may refer to the fact that the sun, moon and stars have been made available freely to all men, and are but common and universal instruments of Yahweh, or it may be pointing out how different Israel are from all other nations. To man in his rebellion and darkness (as illustrated at Babel - Genesis 11:1-9) Yahweh has ‘allotted' these trivialities for them to play at worship with. They receive what they are deserving of. But to Israel He has given Himself to be worshipped within His Tabernacle in true worship in His holy land. The nations have gods which are no gods, Israel have the living God.
The sun was worshipped in Egypt as Ra or Atum and in Canaan as Shemesh (compare Beth-shemesh - the house of ‘Shemesh'). In Mesopotamia the Sumerian moon god/goddess Nanna, called Sin by the Akkadians, was especially worshipped at Ur, and at Haran in Syria and is often represented by an image of the crescent moon. Terah, Abraham's father, was probably a moon worshipper (compare Joshua 24:2). It is mentioned as yrh at Ugarit. The ‘stars' were widely worshipped in a variety of ways, especially Venus. Astral deities were invoked as witnesses in Hittite treaty documents. All in 2nd millennium BC.
The mention of the heavenly bodies is a reminder that treating something natural as an image was as bad as actually making an image. God is not revealed through things of this creation. He is above and beyond creation.
‘ But Yahweh has taken you, and brought you forth out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt, to be to him a people of inheritance, as at this day.'
They were especially to remember also that Yahweh had brought them out of an iron furnace, out of Egypt (compare 1 Kings 8:51; Jeremiah 11:4). There they had been subjected to the heat of man's cruelty. Just as men put their silver and gold into an iron furnace in order to produce a graven image, so has Yahweh put them into a furnace in order that He might produce a purified and holy people. And they had survived and had been refined and delivered. And His purpose in this was in order to make them His inheritance, to make them a treasure, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation (Exodus 19:5-6). That is why they were now here at this particular point in time, and why nothing that came out of earthly fires could be acceptable to them.
“Furnace.” A pot or crucible for melting metals. It was often used as a picture of trial and testing and refining (compare Proverbs 17:3; Isaiah 48:10; Ezekiel 22:18; Ezekiel 22:20; Ezekiel 22:22). ‘Iron' stresses its intensity. It may have referred to what it was made of, or the fact that it was used for shaping iron. While iron coming from meteorites had been known almost from the beginning (Genesis 4:22), the discovery of how it could be obtained from iron ore and utilised, made by the Hittites in the 2nd millennium BC, began a revolution in warfare and tool making. They exported iron among other places to Egypt. It may also be that iron reflects the military strength of Egypt, and the furnace the terrible heat under which day by day they had been subjected to intolerable burdens (compare Exodus 9:8).
‘ Furthermore Yahweh was angry with me for your sakes, and swore that I should not go over the Jordan, and that I should not go in to that good land, which Yahweh your God gives you for an inheritance, but I must die in this land, I must not go over the Jordan. But you shall go over, and possess that good land.'
Let them learn a lesson from him. Because he had sinned grievously at Meribah he was excluded from the land. He could not enter the ‘good land'. He must die the other side of Jordan. Why? Because the land was holy, it was Yahweh's exclusive land, and nothing unworthy could enter it. If anything symbolised what the land of Canaan was to mean it was this. It was a land for the righteous, a land under Yahweh's rule. Even a disobedient Moses was thus excluded. Their own right there comes through atonement on the one hand and obedient submission on the other. Thus if they do not righteously observe His covenant they too will be expelled. The righteousness and purity of this holy and exclusive land (Exodus 15:13; Isaiah 57:13; Ezekiel 20:40; Joel 2:1; Zechariah 2:12) in which the God-produced exclusive people are to dwell (Deuteronomy 7:6; Deuteronomy 14:2; Deuteronomy 26:19; Deuteronomy 28:9; Exodus 19:5-6; Leviticus 20:26) and where they are to worship only Yahweh in the land in which He has His unique earthly Dwellingplace is in direct contrast with the heavenly bodies, which appear to men to be glorious but are in fact common instruments of man and freely available.
“Yahweh was angry with me for your sakes.” It was they who had incited Moses and Aaron to the exasperation that drove them to do what they did. But Yahweh is never depicted as angry with Moses because of the failure of the people. He knew them too well. Nor did He punish Moses for their sins. Indeed many of them had already died in the wilderness. Yahweh's anger was solely because he had failed. He had been given great privilege and great responsibility and he had let Yahweh down. Thus another had had to be raised up in his place. Moses had become too vulnerable in his old age to cope with the problems that would have to be faced. He had for a moment behaved in the same way as all people under heaven do.
But in the context of the whole of sacred history the exclusion of Moses brings out the final unimportance of the land. Had that been of final importance Moses would hardly have been excluded. If anything demands the doctrine of the resurrection it is this exclusion. Otherwise it is inexplicable. If anyone had been loyal to Yahweh's covenant it was Moses. The only explanation had to be that God had a greater land waiting for Moses, one not of this world. Like Abraham he looked for a continuing city that was to come (Hebrews 11:10; Hebrews 11:16), although it may not have been apparent then. In the end that is our inheritance too.
“I must die in this land.” However good and fertile ‘this land' Transjordan might be it was not the good land. Canaan alone was that, for it was chosen by Yahweh as His inheritance. It was chosen for His people. Unlike Mesopotamia and Egypt it was not watered by irrigation and great rivers, but by God Himself, by the rain from heaven (Deuteronomy 12:11; Leviticus 25:4-5; Ezekiel 34:26-27). And it was a land over which Yahweh exercised care (Deuteronomy 11:12; compare Leviticus 26:34; Leviticus 26:43 concerning when it was not treated properly) and that could be emptied of its inhabitants and become totally devoted to Yahweh, a Heaven on earth. It was a holy land (Deuteronomy 7:6). That was the inheritance that He was giving them.
‘ Take heed to yourselves, lest you forget the covenant of Yahweh your God, which he made with you, and make yourselves a graven image in the form of anything which Yahweh your God has forbidden you.'
Thus they must beware of forgetting the covenant of Yahweh their God, made by Him on His own initiative as the Sovereign Lord out of His pure goodness and grace. They must not turn their eyes from Him as the One revealed through fire and cloud with no shape or form, and make graven images in any earthly form or shape, something strictly forbidden by Him. They must ever bare in mind the example of Moses, and learn from it.
‘ For Yahweh your God is a devouring fire, a jealous God.'
For deep into their memory from what they saw on the Mount (Deuteronomy 4:15) should go the fact that Yahweh is a devouring fire and One Who is ‘jealous', that is, will permit no rivals or alternatives. Nor would He countenance anyone who usurped His authority, as Moses and Aaron had done at Meribah. He demands total loyalty. And it is this idea of the devouring fire that now turns Moses' thoughts to warnings of what will follow failure.