Idolatry was the besetting sin of the Israelitish nation: this is the reason why they were so strongly forbidden to make to themselves any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or earth beneath, or that, is in the water under the earth.[1] They were a community of naturally minded men, to whom, therefore, life and immortality were but imperfectly revealed; these were brought to light by the gospel. They were not disposed to appreciate interior truths, and hence it is that so little is said about spiritual things in the letter of their history: those things, however, are contained within the letter and imaged forth thereby. Idolatry prevailed for many ages in various portions of the world long before the Israelites were selected to become a representative people. The inhabitants of those countries had, by natural death, furnished the world of spirits with a multitude of idolatrous spirits; and these would find a plane for action in the Israelitish mind, for they were idolaters in origin and at heart;[2] and this had
- ↑ Exod. xx. 4.
- ↑ Of Abraham, their progenitor, it is written, that "Joshua said unto all the people, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood in old time, even Terah, the father of Abraham and the father of Nahor: and they served other gods." (Josh, xxiv. 2; see also verses 14, 15). It is also expressly declared of Abraham, that Jehovah was not known to him, and that he worshipped the god Schaddai (Exod. vi. 3); and thus that in his youth he was, like other Gentiles, an idolater; and that even after he had been called by the Lord, he did not at once reject from his mind the god Schaddai. The principle of idolatry seems to have had a place in the mind of the Israelitish nation from their origin; and it is very plain, both from the historical and prophetical portions of the word, that they were prone to the worship of idols; and it was because of this that it was so severely condemned among them, and also because its tendency was to destroy the representatives of the Church instituted among them. It was because in heart they remained in the idolatry of Egypt, that, notwithstanding the
