"You shall have no other gods before Me. "You shall not make for yourself a carved image--any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.” Exodus 20:3-6
As we wade into the waters of the second commandment, there are several points to ponder. We’ll consider them one at a time.
First, the theme of the second commandment, stated briefly, is a prohibition of idolatry. God hates idolatry because it elevates what is not God to a position of being a god. Since there is no other [true] God besides the God of the Bible, all idols are false gods.
Second, this makes the first and second commandments very similar. This explains (but does not justify) the fact that the Roman Catholic version of the Ten Commandments rolls the first two commandments in to one.
Most Protestants number only one God, and no idolatry as two separate commandments. Rome says the two are one, only one God, and that no idolatry is merely a sub-point of only one God. The second commandment, according to Rome, prohibits taking the Lord’s name in vain.
How does Rome do this and still have ten commandments? They divide the tenth commandment You shall not covet, into two commandments as follows: #9 You shall not covet your neighbor’s spouse, and #10 You shall not covet your neighbors goods. We’ll discuss that in greater detail when we get to the tenth commandment.
Why does Rome combine the first two commandments into one? A good rule when explaining [judging?] another’s motives is to admit that we cannot know another person’s motives unless the other person reveals them. If the other person does not reveal their motives, or if their explanation seems suspicious, we can speculate, but we cannot definitively assign motives to another.
In the next post, I’ll share a Catholic priest’s reason for combining the first two commandments, and I’ll speculate what is the real reason.