Exodus 20:4-6

 

From my The New American Bible, here is the second of the Ten Commandments: “You shall not carve idols for yourselves in the shape of anything in the sky above or on the earth below or in the waters beneath the earth; you shall not bow down before them or worship them. For I, the Lord, your God, am a jealous God, inflicting punishment for their fathers’ wickedness on the children of those that hate me, down to the third or fourth generation; but bestowing mercy down to the thousandth generation, on the children of those who love me and keep my commandments.”

 

My response: Here is the footnote from this Bible on Exodus 20:5 “Jealous: demanding exclusive allegiance, such as a wife must have for her husband.”

 

As a polytheist, modern believer, and conservative ex-Unitarian/Universalist, I think the declaration by Yahweh that He was a jealous God demanding exclusive allegiance, was a stiff, forbidding, divine stance that Yahweh needed at that time to help the Hebrews break out away from the pagan religions of their neighbors and ancestors, to evolve spiritually and morally to a higher level of existing, by becoming monotheistic.

 

Today, now that monotheism is so widespread and traditional, a new monotheistic/polytheistic association of good deities is acceptable for one to worship (or any combination thereof): one can be strictly a monotheist, or blend in with polytheism, worshiping the whole range of good deities, from major to minor in status. I think not that Yahweh, or any other Supreme Deity would object to this new, upgraded mixture of worship, both monotheistic and polytheistic, because the good deities wrote the eternal law, the divine law and the natural law of moderation.

 

Both the major and minor good deities today, would be jealous and demand exclusive allegiance from humans in terms of strictly forbidding that human worship bad deities like demons, ideologies or holy causes requiring gurus to run them, with legions of followers, true believers in a mass movement.

 

That Yahweh would inflict punishment, for their fathers’ wickedness, onto the children of those that hated Him, down to the third or fourth generation, may seem harsh and unreasonable, in that the children can only be condemned for sins they committed, not for what their ancestors committed. This could mean they are predestined to go to hell like their fathers, or that they would be punished in this world unto the 4^th generation, but their worldly affliction would not rule out their still having free will to not sin, to worship God, and still have a chance to get to heaven.

 

The latter seems more likely to me, but Yahweh is trying to show that he is just, that the descendants are only punished for 4 generations, but that the descendants of the faithful obedient will be shown mercy for a thousand generations.

 

It may not seem fair that the descendants of the faithful should get a free pass (predestined to go to heaven) whether these offspring deserve to go to heaven or not, but that is one way to read this passage.

 

It seems that Yahweh also could have meant that the good fore-parents do in this world ripples out socially for many generations afterward, and that bad fore-parents, their influence, poisons that well-being of future generations for a time going forward.

 

Yahweh is making clear that He demands exclusive worship, and that those that love Him will obey his commandments. Yahweh demands to be love, obeyed, and wants humans to be really, really good spiritually and morally and that is how they worship God exclusively.

 

If humans hate Yahweh and His love of virtue and piety, and choose to worship Satan or bad deities, to sin and live impiously, then that betrayal of God will be harshly punished and should be.

 

Satan hates, really hates, and goes after those that love goodness and are good. God hates, really hates not the sinner, but the sin and evil that they commit, and that misbehavior and rebellion against divine law will not go unanswered or unpunished.

 

The graven images and molten images prohibited by Yahweh that the pagans and idolaters worshiped were likely too crude, magical, simplistic, or manipulative to convey what it is to worship a good supreme being. Some of these images may have represented demons or evil deities.

 

That said, I think today if we have a statue of Jesus on the Cross or some art paintings of sacred scenes, that is not negative worshiping of graven images or molten images.

 

Here are those same verses from the Holy Bible (KJV): “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any 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:

 

Thou shalt not bow thyself down to them, nor serve them: 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;

 

and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments.”