The First Commandment condemns the worshipping of false gods; the Second condemns the making of any image or symbol even of the true God.
I. It would have been natural for the Jews to do this. They had many traditions of Divine revelations made to their ancestors. They might have attempted to perpetuate in a visible and permanent form the impressions which His supernatural acts had made upon their imagination and their hearts. They actually did it, for the golden calf was not intended to represent any false god, any deity worshipped by heathen races, but Jehovah Himself. It was the symbol of the God who had brought them out of Egypt.
II. The fundamental principle of this commandment has authority for us still. The whole history of Christendom is a demonstration of the peril and ruin which come from any attempt to supplement by art and by stately and impressive rites the revelation which God has made of Himself in Christ.
III. The justice of the penalty which is denounced against those who transgress this commandment it is very easy to dispute. The crime is to be punished not only in the men who are personally guilty, but in their descendants. The answer is: (1) The same unity of race by which the results of the virtue and genius of one age are transmitted to the ages which succeed it renders it inevitable that the results of the folly and vice of one age should be entailed on the ages which succeed it, and (2) the commandment shows that the righteousness of men endures longer than their sin. The evil which comes from man's wickedness endures for a time, but perishes at last; the good that comes from man's well-doing is all but indestructible.
R. W. Dale, The Ten Commandments,p. 40.
References: Exodus 20:4-6. H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xiii., p. 188; J. Oswald Dykes, The Law of the 'Ten Words,p. 53; F. D. Maurice, The Commandments,p. 18; S. Leathes, The Foundations of Morality,pp. 79, 92.Exodus 20:5. C. Kingsley, National Sermons,pp. 144, 153; J. B. Mozley, Ruling Ideas in Early Ages,p. 104.Exodus 20:5; Exodus 20:6. S. Cox, Expositions,3rd series, p. 1.