Scripture Daily

Context No. 685 of 4322 · Deuteronomy

Context · Reflection

Deuteronomy 4:9-24: in context

9Only be careful, and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things which your eyes saw, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life; but make them known to your children and your children’s children— 10the day that you stood before the LORD your God in Horeb, when the LORD said to me, “Assemble the people to me, and I will make them hear my words, that they may learn to fear me all the days that they live on the earth, and that they may teach their children.” 11You came near and stood under the mountain. The mountain burned with fire to the heart of the sky, with darkness, cloud, and thick darkness. 12The LORD spoke to you out of the middle of the fire: you heard the voice of words, but you saw no form; you only heard a voice. 13He declared to you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, even the ten commandments. He wrote them on two stone tablets. 14The LORD commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and ordinances, that you might do them in the land where you go over to possess it. 15Be very careful, 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, 16lest you corrupt yourselves, and make yourself a carved image in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female, 17the likeness of any animal that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the sky, 18the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water under the earth; 19and lest you lift up your eyes to the sky, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, even all the army of the sky, you are drawn away and worship them, and serve them, which the LORD your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole sky. 20But the LORD has taken you, and brought you out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt, to be to him a people of inheritance, as it is today. 21Furthermore the LORD 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 the LORD your God gives you for an inheritance; 22but I must die in this land. I must not go over the Jordan, but you shall go over and possess that good land. 23Be careful, lest you forget the covenant of the LORD your God, which he made with you, and make yourselves a carved image in the form of anything which the LORD your God has forbidden you. 24For the LORD your God is a devouring fire, a jealous God.

Deuteronomy is Moses speaking to Israel one last time before he dies and they cross without him. Here he is pressing them to remember, and to make their children remember, one particular day: the day they stood at the foot of Horeb while the mountain burned to the heart of the sky in fire and cloud and darkness, and God spoke to them out of the middle of the fire. And Moses fastens on a strange feature of that day. You heard a voice, he says, but you saw no form. There was sound and no shape, words and no picture.

On that he builds the whole command against images. Because you saw no form, take care not to make one, of a man or a woman, an animal or a bird or a fish, and do not bow to the sun or moon or stars. You cannot carve what you never saw; the God who came as a voice is not to be turned into a thing you can look at and handle. Moses adds his own hard note, that he will not cross the Jordan himself, and then the warning that stands over it all: the LORD your God is a devouring fire, a jealous God. He will not be reduced to an image, and he will not share the worship owed to him.

God gave them a voice to obey and no form to look at, and told them not to invent one. What picture of God have I made for myself, easier to manage than the voice I am actually meant to obey?

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