Exodus 20:4-6

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Exodus 20:4

THE SECOND COMMANDMENT

The Being and Spirituality of God seem to be among the most simple ideas of which the human mind is susceptible; and yet they have been perverted or entirely obliterated by the corruption of our nature. The Being of God is almost universally admitted. But the Spirituality of His essence has never entered into the conceptions of mankind under the dominion of sense. The deities of the heathen were all local—often in the form of deified heroes—it was therefore natural that they were made to assume a shape. Even the Israelites were guilty of this unholy worship.

I. Offer some general observations upon idolatry.

1. In the origin of idolatry we may find a lesson for our guidance with regard to the misuse of things in themselves lawful, and the perversion of ideas in themselves unobjectionable. The probable origin of idolatry was the perversion of simple and sublime sentiments. When mankind, in the infancy of their existence, opened their eyes upon creation, they beheld everything wonderful and splendid in the scene. What could be more calculated to awaken inspiring contemplations? The mind would then soon pass from admiration to reverence and worship. Thus homage was paid to the sun, moon, and stars, which was only due to the Creator. The reverence felt for men of genius gave them an ideal grandeur, and exalted them into the rank of deities. Thus the perversion of good ideas occasioned the growth of bad ones.

2. Nothing can be more painful than to record the extensive prevalence of idolatry. It would have been a melancholy fact had history stated its existence in only one town; how sad when all nations are under its influence. This proves the folly and depravity of man. The whole world has wandered from God.

3. The effects of idolatry. While, on the one hand, the depravity of the human heart has produced idolatrous worship, this has reacted upon man himself, to debase his character. The effects of idolatry are cruelty, the rendering sacred the worst vices, the contaminating the temples and homes of the land, and the corrupting of society.

4. The spirit of the command in the text must be considered as including all mental idolatry. There is a distinction to be made between idolatry and image worship. The former, which is the worship of false gods, is forbidden in the First Commandment; the latter, which is the worship more especially of images or representations of the true God, is interdicted in the Second. But as all out-ward figures or images of God are forbidden, so it must be considered that every substitute for God, as an object of adoration and love, is also forbidden, for God requires the supreme homage of the heart. We must not form an image in the mind of anything lovely which turns aside the mind from God. Covetousness is idolatry. What images of folly and abomination lurk in the secret recesses of the mind!

II. Notice the particular reasons here assigned for its interdiction. These reasons comprehend both the jealousy and mercy of Jehovah; both powerful considerations.

1. The Divine jealousy and its terrific manifestations. The term is frequently applied in the Old Testament to God, and is strikingly descriptive of His determination to maintain His high prerogatives. Jealousy is considered as one of the strongest passions of our nature. It is the feeling which an interference on the part of another with the object of tender affection inspires—a feeling of wounded love. We are not to suppose that God is susceptible of any painful emotion of the mind, in the strict sense of the word; but this passion is employed to illustrate the fact of that concern about His people which God is described as entertaining. The heathen gods had no jealousy; they were not capable of love.

2. Another reason for the interdiction of idol worship is taken from the mercy of God; and it is one, in its nature, most conciliative. The Jewish economy, as well as the Christian, was founded in mercy. Their formation into a distinct and chosen people was the outcome of mercy. Their system of worship was ordained by heaven in mercy. They had providential mercies. What motives are there in the mercies of God to urge us to keep the commandments.—(F. A. Cox, LL.D.)

SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES

Exodus 20:4. There are few feelings stronger than those of the parent for his children, and it argues an extraordinary moral derangement where the father is careless and indifferent to the wellbeing of his offspring. The Supreme Legislator has taken advantage (so to speak) of these sentiments, and arranged them on the side of righteousness. He attacks men through the avenue of the domestic charities, and calls upon them to prove themselves not unnatural parents, by striving to lead a life of holiness and piety. If they care not for themselves, will they not for their children! If they are indifferent to the ruin which sin must procure for their own portion, can they consent to the sending down to those they best love an hereafter of woe and of shame? Yet this is precisely what they have a right to expect if they go on in a career of transgression. “I, the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generations of them that hate Me.”

We shall assume that the announced visitation of the iniquities of the fathers upon the children is unrestricted and general, so that it constitutes a feature in the fixed economy of the Almighty. We must state, however, that when we speak of the fathers and of the children, we are not to confine our ideas to that single relationship which these terms would ordinarily define. It is clear that the alleged principle is, the dealings of God must be supposed to take a wider range. The principle is, that one set of men shall be made to suffer for the sins of another set of men. We should do evident violence to the spirit, and, we may almost say, to the letter of the precept, were we to suppose that the transmission of iniquity was only then to take place when the parties were associated by the close ties of blood.—H. Melvill, B.D.

Of course the case of the father and the child is one of those cases in which the principle is applicable; but whatever the connexion which binds together two sets of men—whether it be that which subsists between rulers and subjects, or that general one between the present generation and the following, or that between the members of a church and their successors—the same principle is brought into play, so that the punishment of sin may descend on those who have had no part whatever in the commission of that sin.—Ibid.

Now we can add other instances which, if less general, are not less decisive. You remember that when David sinned by numbering the people, the monarch himself was not stricken for the offence. A pestilence was sent, so that there died from Dan even to Beersheba seventy thousand men; and so evident was it, that the king cried out in the bitterness of his soul, “I have sinned, but these sheep, what have they done?” A still stronger instance is to be found in the history of the Gibeonites. Joshua had made a league with the Gibeonites, covenanting that they should not be destroyed with the rest of the inhabitants of Canaan. In contravention of this league, Saul sought to extirpate the Gibeonites, and in his zeal put many of them to death. This sin of Saul was not at once noticed by God; but in the days of David there was a famine, and God, on being enquired of, declared that it was a judgment on account of Saul’s sin in slaying the Gibeonites. And what was the vengeance He then took for that sin? Seven of the sons of Saul were delivered to the Gibeonites, and hung up to the Lord in Gibeah of Saul; and then was God entreated for the land. Who will say that in this instance God visited not on the children the iniquity of the father? In like manner David had fallen into the heinous sins of adultery and murder; on confessing his iniquity he was punished! Hear how the prophet Nathan speaks to the king—“Because by this deed thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme, the child also that is born unto thee shall surely die.” But our instances are not exhausted. We bid you next look at the Jews, strewed over the globe like the fragments of some mighty shipwreck. What have this people done that, through long centuries the weakest are strong enough to trample on them, the humblest lofty enough to despise them? Why should the countrymen of the Maccabees, those prodigies of valour, have been oppressed by every child, as though their arms were incapable of being strung by bravery? You can give no explanation of the history of the Jews since the destruction of Jerusalem, if you keep out of sight that they are under the ban of God’s displeasure for the iniquity of their forefathers. It is, however, worthy of observation that the proceeding after all cannot be repugnant to our notions of justice, since its exact parallel occurs in human legislation. If the statutebook of the country enact the visiting on children the sin of the father, it will be hard to show that the visitation is counter to common sense and equity. In cases of treason, we all know that it is not the traitor alone who is punished. His estates are confiscated, his honours destroyed; so that, in place of transmitting rank and affluence to his son, he transmits him nothing but shame and beggary. We do not say that the thing must be just because enacted by human laws; we only say that there can be no felt and acknowledged contradiction between the proceeding and the principles of equity, since human laws involve the children in the doom of the parent. He, who would have worn a ducal coronet and succeeded to a noble patrimony had his father kept unsullied his loyalty, loses both title and revenue if his father revolt against his king, though all the while he himself had no share in the treason; and the consequences go on from generation to generation; so that the highborn family is for ever degraded, and penury and ignominy make up the heritage which passes down to a remote posterity, who, except for the rebellion of a single ancestor, would have rolled in wealth and ranked with princes. We are clear that the gist of the question lies in this: Do the children when visited for the iniquities of the fathers lose anything to which they have a right, or receive anything which they have not deserved? It is certain, on all the principles of a sound theology, that sin involved the forfeiture of every blessing and exposure to every misery; it is just as certain, therefore, that no blessing can be obtained, and no misery averted, by right; and we think it, consequently, an inference not to be disputed, that whatever are God’s reasons for making adistinction between families, there cannot be injustice in visiting on children the iniquities of parents. The visitation cannot overpass what is due to the children themselves; and who then can pronounce the visitation unjust? Why, then, it is certain that the child is dealt with injuriously, if sentenced for the parents’ iniquity to penury and affliction. Are penury and affliction never overruled for good? It is necessarily an evil to have been born poor in place of rich; to be of weak health instead of strong; to struggle with adversity, in place of being lapped in prosperity. No man who feels himself immortal, who is conscious that this confined theatre of existence is but the school in which he is trained for a wider and nobler still, will contend for the necessary injuriousness of want and calamity; and yet, unless this necessary injuriousness is suffered, it cannot be proved that the children who are visited for the father’s iniquity are on the whole worse off than they would have been had there been no visitation. Thus the argument against as much falls to the ground as that against his justice; for, proceeding on the principle that physical evil is never subservient to moral good, we overthrow our position by assuming what we know to be false.—H. Melvill.

ILLUSTRATIONS

BY
THE REV. WILLIAM ADAMSON

Idol Inventions! Exodus 20:4. The god Moloch was a fearful-looking monster, with a huge red mouth and grinning teeth, to show that he was fond of blood. The goddess Kalee, worshipped by many persons in India, is a fierce-looking female figure, with instruments of death in her hands, and a string of human skulls hanging round her neck as an ornament. Ganesa, another of the gods of the Hindus, is represented with the head of an elephant, and having four arms and hands. He always appears riding on the back of a great rat, having the figure of a serpent wreathed round his head. There are hundreds of uglier and more repulsive idols among the poor heathen in Africa and the South Seas; but it is not their hideousness that condemns them as objects of worship. Lovely idols are as loathsome in God’s sight. How lovely are the sun, moon, and stars, and how greatly the Psalmist appreciated their exceeding beauty! Yet men have made these beautiful creations of God loathsome. How! By making idols of them. The Brazen Serpent was no doubt a very bright and beautiful object; but it became repulsive when turned into an object of worship, and had to be destroyed. To admire a beautiful sculpture—whether stone, marble, brass, or silver—is not wrong; but to adore it, raises the Divine jealousy.

“Thou art a God who beareth

No rival near Thy throne;

Yet many a creature shareth

The love that is Thine own.”