"As the first commandment forbids any association with other gods to those who would be Yahweh's, the second commandment and the two that follow it set special dimensions of their relationship with him."332
This was a prohibition against making images or likenesses of Yahweh. God did not forbid making pictures or images of creatures per se. Any likeness of God demeans Him and retards rather than advances His worship. By making an image of a god people put themselves in a position of sovereignty over the deity. God wanted His people to accept their place as the creatures of the Creator. The Israelite who made an image of Yahweh would put himself or herself in the position of creator and Yahweh in the place of created thing. Furthermore he or she would face temptation to confuse the image with God and worship it rather than Him.
The consequences of disobedience to this command would continue for a few generations, as the later history of Israel proved. However obedience to it would result in blessing for limitless generations (cf. Deut. 7:9-10).
"Yahweh's jealousy is a part of his holiness (Exod 34:14) and is demanded by what he is. It is justified by the fact that it comes only upon those who, having promised to have no God but him, have gone back on that promise. Those who do so show that they hate' him, that they hold him in contempt: upon them in result must come a deserved judgment, across four generations."333
"The use of images and the human control of the god that was a part of their use would infringe on the freedom of Yahweh to manifest himself when and how he sovereignly determined. By prohibiting the one means by which the gods of the people around Israel supposedly manifested themselves Israel was protected from the assimilation of foreign religious values, and the prohibition of images played a significant role in the successful survival of Israel's religion. It seems clear that the prohibition of images both in practice and in its theological basis is but another example of the fundamentally different religious value-system that distinguished Israel from her ancient Near Eastern contemporaries."334
"Through sacrifice to the idol, large amounts of material productivity were funneled into the control of the Canaanite priestly and royal classes. The idol was therefore a kind of tax or tribute gathering device. In this context, Israelite hostility to cultic images yields to a possible two-fold interpretation. First, by repudiating the cultic image, Israel rid itself of an important source of wealth for the ruling classes, thereby thwarting possible internal programs seeking to reestablish political hierarchy. Second, frontier Israel was insured that agricultural goods used in cultic sacrifice would be circulated back into the producing community [cf. Deut. 12:5-7; 26:12-15]. An imageless cult was one way of enhancing political and economic self-sufficiency."335
