The veto on images and the aniconic God in Ancient Israel

Authors

• Tryggve Mettinger

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30674/scripta.67115

Keywords:

Israel -- Religion, Theology -- Israel, Image of God, Torah, Idolatry, Symbolism in the Bible, Judaism -- History, Middle East -- Religion -- Ancient Period

Abstract

Throughout the long history Israel was quite familiar with the phenomenon of cultic images, a familiarity which it acquired by contact with other cultures. From the pre-monarchic period we have the traditions—which in all probability were originally neutral—about the bronze serpent and Aaron's bull; the polemic in the latter narrative appears not to be original. We may here include the stories of Gideon's ephod and Micah's image as well. The official Jerusalem cult was undoubtedly aniconic, but the absence of images had scarcely taken on the character of a command in a fixed prohibition. The ark had not yet been rationalized into a mere container for the tablets of the testimony. In the Northern Kingdom the bull image in Bethel (and in Dan?) escaped prophetic criticism for one and a half centuries. Jehu's reforms did not alter this fact, nor do Elijah and Elisha seem to have expressed misgivings. First in the eighth century the prophetic polemic against images is formulated by Hosea immediately in its full force. The prohibition is one expression of the reaction against Canaanite culture and religion which found its most extreme form in the Rechabites' stubborn fight for nomadic ideals and their consequent refusal to live in houses, take up agriculture, or drink wine (Jer 35,6-7). When the prohibition is seen in this perspective, the question becomes little more than academic whether the ban was directed against images of foreign gods or representations of Israel's God. It is directed against both, the intention being to prohibit all cultic images. Its place in the decalogue is thus quite appropriate: it forms the transition from the prohibition of other gods to the commands regarding the divine name and the sabbath, both of which refer to the JHWH cult. The prohibition is of course not to be understood in an exclusively negative sense, as a safe-guard against syncretism. It may also be understood as positively expressing the distinctive character of Israel's understanding of the deity.