The Second Commandment

"Thou shalt not make unto thee
a graven image, nor any manner

of likeness, of any thing that is in

heaven above, or that is in the

earth beneath, or that is in the

water under the earth..."

~Exodus 20:4 (emphasis mine)

I'm an artist, so the Second Commandment is very relevant to me. Followers of my blog, if there are any out there, may have noticed that previous blog entries have been illustrated in various ways, usually with one picture at the top but sometimes more. That is no longer the case.

In Christian translations of Exodus, the translation makes it appear that the Second Commandment is solely referring to images of idols for worship. For most people today, that is, or at least appears, to be an unproblematic Commandment. Few people in developed countries overtly worship idols in the sense that people used to bow down to statues of Baal or Asherah or Zeus. Some do, not many. The language in Exodus 20:4-5 in the NIV for instance is softened to:

You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything

in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters

below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them

However, in my Hebrew-English transliteration of the Torah, written by people who are transliterating directly from Hebrew Torah scrolls and know Hebrew intimately, there is no such easy out. A more direct and much more clunky translation which is more or less word for word is this:

Not will you do to you sculpture and

any resemblance which in the sky from

upward and which in the land from under and

which in the water from under the land

Clunky, but Hebrew doesn't work like English. The hebrew is this, reading right to left:

לֹא תַעֲשֶׂה לְךָ פֶסֶל וְכָל תְּמוּנָה אֲשֶׁר בַּשָּׁמַיִם מִמַּעַל  וַאֲשֶׁר בָּאָרֶץ מִתָּחַת וַאֲשֶׁר בַּמַּיִם מִתַּחַת לָאָרֶץ

From left to right:

"Not do sculpture all (any) resemblance which sky upward which land under which water under land"

lo  ta'a'seh  lê'kha  phe'sel  wê'khol  tê'mu'nah  a'sher  ba'sha'ma'yim  mi'ma'al  ba'a'rets  mi'ta'hhat  wa'a'sher  ba'ma'yim  mi'ta'hhat  la'a'rets


Many of the conjunctions and adverbs and modifiers that exist in English do not exist in Hebrew and are assumed from the context. In ancient Hebrew there weren't even vowels, consonants were considered stable and fixed whereas vowels were considered active and living. In other words you could say that consonants were nonliving like stone, and vowels were living, and they didn't make marks or symbols for living things even in their language. An interesting word here is tê'mu'nah which directly means species, like a species of animal, but also means likeness. When Genesis says we are made in the image of G-d, the word is tê'mu'nah, likeness, which also means species or type. Which it is extremely hard to see what that likeness is considering the human condition, but there you have it.

Anyway, getting back on point. As an artist, the Second Commandment is very challenging to me, though I have not completely lost hope in making art that does not violate it. Ironically, I always hated abstract art, it's funny in a way. Now if I make art at all, it will have to be abstract to some degree or at least of something unliving.

Why should we regard the Second Commandment as relevant even though we live in an age when very few people overtly bow down to idols of deities? Well the first reason is that modern people absolutely do bow down to idols, they are just different idols. They are in a sense worse idols because people don't perceive them as such. Money, sex, the human figure, success, power, consumption, even technology, these are all modern idols. In the case of technology, in at least one instance it is even named as such: "the Cult of Mac." The religion of Apple, in other words. Look at our advertising: when we see advertising images of sexy bodies or desirable cars or other things, is this not the modern idolatry? It is. The connection of sex to idolatry has very old roots, some ancient pagan religions had temple prostitutes who worked their bodies for their god. Religion with benefits, you might say. ;) Actual art itself, fine art, is a cult of sorts, with people spending millions on what is in actuality only pigment on cloth. People will spend literally millions on any scrap of canvas that Van Gogh for instance might have dabbed some paint on. Ironic considering the difficult economic conditions that Van Gogh found himself in his life.

There is another reason that is not as obvious but is just as important. In the modern world we create entire mental landscapes of things with photographs, we make games and other virtual worlds (the game Skyrim has been described as "a continent in a box,") we build our mental visions with concrete and steel, we are always on the verge of closing ourselves into a landscape of our own making, both externally in the world of cars and parking lots and buildings, and also internally, in our own minds. This clearly is not what G-d had in mind, He wants to turn our focus to the real: in other words, to Himself and His creation. Every minute in the life of a truly G-d-conscious human being can be a direct revelation from G-d to himself, and part of that is revelation through His creation and His world. His, not ours. To some degree or other we have a choice: to turn towards His world or a human-created world. These two are not compatible, they are not in agreement. G-d is Lord, not us. But we make ourselves to be our own lords.

To the extent we do that, to the extent that we make our own human worlds which humans are the masters of, we cut ourselves off from this living revelation which G-d offers us every single day of our lives.

There are some truths about the Second Commandment which would not have been clear to the ancients, which are becoming clear only now. Now that we are gaining the potential to erase the real world from our minds and substitute it with an unreal human one. In many ways, this has already happened.