Facebook
TwitterNumbers 21:8 – Did not God command Moses to violate the very command He gave him against idolatry?
QUESTION
God commanded Moses not to make a carved image, not to bow down to them nor serve them (Exodus 20:4).
However, God commanded Moses to make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole so that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, shall live (Numbers 21:8).
Later, the people worshiped this very image (2 Kings 18:4).
Did not God command Moses to violate the very command He gave him against idolatry?
ANSWER
1. The command against making carved images was a command against making idols.
God did not command Moses to make an idol for the people to worship but a symbol to which they could look in faith and be healed.
Later, the people made this symbol into an idol. But this does not make the symbol wrong.
2. Not all “images are idols. Religious art contains images but because of that they are idolatrous.
God also instructed Moses to make cherubim for the ark but they were not idols.
There is a difference between a God-appointed symbol (e.g. the bread the wine in the Lord’s Supper) and a man-made idol.
BIBLE REFERENCES
Exodus 20:4-6
4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; 5 you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, 6 but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.
Numbers 21:8-9
8 Then the LORD said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and it shall be that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, shall live.” 9 So Moses made a bronze serpent, and put it on a pole; and so it was, if a serpent had bitten anyone, when he looked at the bronze serpent, he lived.
2 Kings 18:4
4 He removed the high places and broke the sacred pillars, cut down the wooden image and broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made; for until those days the children of Israel burned incense to it, and called it Nehushtan.
Bookmark and Share this page:
