If making images is forbidden, why did God command the cherubim and the bronze serpent?

Hard question · The law of Moses · raised by 3 of the lists sceptics circulate

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The passages

Exodus 20:4–5

The second commandment: no graven image or likeness; ‘Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them’.

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 down thyself 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;

Deuteronomy 4:15–19

Israel saw no form of God at Horeb, so must make no image of any creature to worship, nor worship the sun, moon and stars.

Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves; for ye saw no manner of similitude on the day that the Lord spake unto you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire: Lest ye corrupt yourselves, and make you a graven image, the similitude of any figure, the likeness of male or female, The likeness of any beast that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged fowl that flieth in the air, The likeness of any thing that creepeth on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the waters beneath the earth: And lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, shouldest be driven to worship them, and serve them, which the Lord thy God hath divided unto all nations under the whole heaven.

Exodus 25:18–20

God commands two golden cherubim on the mercy seat of the ark.

And thou shalt make two cherubims of gold, of beaten work shalt thou make them, in the two ends of the mercy seat. And make one cherub on the one end, and the other cherub on the other end: even of the mercy seat shall ye make the cherubims on the two ends thereof. And the cherubims shall stretch forth their wings on high, covering the mercy seat with their wings, and their faces shall look one to another; toward the mercy seat shall the faces of the cherubims be.

Numbers 21:8–9

God tells Moses to make a bronze serpent on a pole; those bitten who look at it live.

And the Lord said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live. And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.

2 Kings 18:4

Hezekiah breaks the bronze serpent in pieces, because Israel had been burning incense to it.

He removed the high places, and brake the images, and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the brasen serpent that Moses had made: for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it: and he called it Nehushtan.

The objection

The second commandment forbids making “any graven image, or any likeness of any thing” in heaven, on earth or in the water. Yet God ordered golden cherubim for the ark and a bronze serpent on a pole. How can God forbid images and then command them?

The answer

The commandment continues: “Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them” (Exodus 20:5). What it forbids is making images to worship, whether as other gods or as pictures of the Lord himself. Deuteronomy 4 gives the reason: at Horeb Israel “saw no manner of similitude” of God, so they were not to make any likeness of man, beast, bird or fish to represent him, nor to worship the sun and stars (4:15-19). Keil and Delitzsch read the second commandment as forbidding the worship of the Lord through any visible image.

The cherubim and the serpent were not objects of worship. The cherubim stood in the Most Holy Place, which only the high priest entered, once a year, as figures of the heavenly beings around God’s throne; no one bowed to them. Solomon’s temple was likewise carved with cherubim, palm trees and flowers (1 Kings 6:29), so art as such was not forbidden. The bronze serpent was a sign God appointed for healing, and Jesus later used it as a picture of his own death (John 3:14). When Israel began to burn incense to it, Hezekiah broke it in pieces and was praised for doing so (2 Kings 18:3-4). That is the commandment applied exactly: the same object was lawful as a sign and forbidden as an idol.

Still open

Christians differ on how far the commandment reaches today. The Reformed tradition holds that it forbids any image of God, including pictures of Christ used in worship; Lutheran, Catholic and Orthodox Christians allow images of Christ and the saints, while denying that they are worshipped in the way the commandment forbids. All agree that it forbids the worship of images.

From the classic commentators

whenever Jehovah, the God who cannot be copied because He reveals His spiritual nature in no visible form, is worshipped under some visible image, the glory of the invisible God is changedC. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament: Exodus 20, at Bible Hub