Exodus 20:5

thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, in the act of adoration, nor serve them, actually giving them the worship, the honor which pertains to God alone, for that is the point of the entire prohibition, that pictures and images should not be made for purposes of worship. For I, the Lord, thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me, not with the certainty of absolute fatality, but as a just punishment of those children that follow their parents and ancestors in their evil ways;