Moses said to the people, “Don’t be afraid, for God has come to test you, and that his fear may be before you, that you won’t sin.”
Not to make any figure or likeness for the purpose of worship
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
לֹא תַעֲשׂוּן אִתִּי אֱלֹהֵי כֶסֶף וֵאלֹהֵי זָהָב לֹא תַעֲשׂוּ לָכֶם
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
שהזהירנו מעשות צורות בעלי חיים מהעצים והאבנים והמתכות וזולתם ואע"פ שלא יעשו להעבד, וזה הרחקה מעשות הצורות כלל כדי שלא יחשוב בהם מה שיחשבו הסכלים עע"ז שיחשבו כי לצורות כחות. והוא אמרו יתעלה לא תעשון אתי אלהי כסף ואלהי זהב. ולשון מכילתא בענין לאו זה על צד הבאור אלהי כסף לא תעשו שלא תאמר הריני עושה לנוי כדרך שאחרים עושין במדינות תלמוד לומר לא תעשו לכם. והעובר על לאו זה חייב מלקות. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו ואי זה מן הצורות אפשר לציירם ואי זה מהם לא יצויירו ואיך יהיה תאר הציור בפ"ג מע"ז. והתבאר בסנהדרין (דף ז':) שלאו זה גם כן רוצה לומר אמרו לא תעשון כולל ענינים מכוונת מצוה זו. אבל פשטיה דקרא מדבר במה שזכרנו כמו שהתבאר במכילתא. (וישמע יתרו, מדע הלכות ע"ז וחקות העכו"ם פ"ג):
That He prohibited us from making images from wood, stones, metal and other [substances] - and even though they are not made to worship. And this distancing, of not making images at all, is in order that one not think that which the foolish worshippers of idolatry think about them - that the images have power. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "You shall not make any gods of silver or gods of gold with Me" (Exodus 20:20). And the language of the Mekhilta (Mekhilta d'Rabbi Yishmael Chapter 20:20:2) regarding the content of this negative commandment, by way of explanation is, "'You shall not make any gods of silver' - that you should not say, 'Behold I shall make it for ornamentation, as others do in the provinces.' [Hence] we learn to say, 'You shall not make [...] for yourselves.'" And one who transgresses this negative commandment is liable for lashes. And the regulations of this commandment - and which forms can be fashioned and which cannot be fashioned and what is the description of fashioning - have already been explained in Chapter 3 of Tractate Avodah Zarah. And it has already been explained in Sanhedrin (Sanhedrin 7b) that this negative statement - meaning to say, His saying, "You shall not make" - includes content beyond this commandment. But the simple understanding of the verse is that it is speaking about that which we mentioned, as is explained in the Mekhilta. (See Parashat Yitro; Mishneh Torah, Foreign Worship and Customs of the Nations 3.)
Hebrew: Sefer HaMitzvot, Warsaw 1883 (public domain). English: Sefaria Edition, trans. Rabbi Francis Nataf, 2021 (CC0). Via Sefaria; translator’s footnotes omitted.
Literary form: a prohibition
Applicability
How the catalog describes where and when this commandment applies. These are independent descriptions, not a verdict on which laws still count.
- Recorded as practiced today
Classical halakhic consequences
The consequences the classical halakhah attaches to this commandment, grouped by who imposes them. Where a category has none recorded, that absence is itself meaningful.
Imposed by a court
- Lashes (malkot)
At the hands of Heaven
No divinely-imposed consequence is recorded.
Ritual remedy
No ritual remedy is recorded.
How the streams of Judaism treat this commandment
The streams of Judaism read the same commandment differently — an ongoing plurality, not a ranking. Each position below is reported as the catalog records it; none is presented as the correct one.
- Orthodox Binding
- Conservative Binding
- Reform Kept as an ethical principle
- Reconstructionist Kept as an ethical principle
- Karaite Binding
24 of 613 commandments have been examined in depth so far — this one is queued.
How later traditions received this commandment
How later traditions read or reworked this commandment, each attributed to its own voice. The catalog’s own classification of each reception is shown as it records it, never adopted as GEBible’s.
Rabbinic aggadah
- Exodus Rabbah 42:1-8 expanded it homiletically
- Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Bahodesh 10 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Decalogo 66-76 rationalized it
- De Specialibus Legibus 1.21-31 rationalized it
Josephus
- Antiquities 3.91 affirmed it
- Antiquities 8.226-229 affirmed it condemnation of Jeroboam's golden calves (Josephus: heifers/damaleis)
The New Testament
- Acts 17:29 affirmed it Paul at the Areopagus: the divine ought not be thought like gold or silver shaped by human craft — a general aniconic argument resonant with the metal-idol prohibition
- Acts 19:23-27 affirmed it Ephesus silversmith riot; polemic against silver shrines of Artemis as 'gods made with hands'
- Romans 1:23 affirmed it general idolatry critique: exchanging the glory of God for images of mortals, birds, animals, reptiles — a broad echo rather than a specific metal-gods parallel
The Church Fathers
- Athanasius, Contra Gentes 13-15 affirmed it
- Tertullian, De Idololatria 3-5 read it more strictly
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 7:148 carried a parallel
- Q 21:52-67 carried a parallel
- Q 25:3 carried a parallel
Beside the older legal codes of its world
The commandment set beside the ancient Near-Eastern legal collections scholars compare it to — a descriptive comparison, not a claim of dependence.
- enuma elish the Babylonian framework in which humanity is created to serve the gods and temples house the divine cult; offered only as a distant thematic contrast to Israel's aniconic ideal, not as a parallel to metal cult-statue manufacture Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast Tablet VI lines 1-40 (creation of humanity for the service of the gods and the building of Esagila) Lambert, Babylonian Creation Myths (Eisenbrauns, 2013)
- ugaritic texts Ugaritic tradition in which El bears bovine epithets (ṯr il, 'Bull El') and the high gods possess palatial dwellings and cultic apparatus; the prohibition on silver and gold cult images stands in polemical contrast to this West Semitic tradition, including the bull-iconography behind the golden calf Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast KTU 1.4 (Baʿlu's palace-construction narrative) Smith and Pitard, The Ugaritic Baal Cycle (Brill, 1994, 2009)
Where this commandment meets modern human-rights frameworks
One modern normative lens, attributed to it — not GEBible’s assessment. Each row names the framework it measures against and the catalog’s own classification of the relation.
This framework catalogues tensions; it records agreement in only one of its entries. The near-total tension rate is the shape of the instrument, not a finding.
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UDHR Article 18
This framework classifies the relation as a substantive tension.
UDHR Article 18 protects the freedom to manifest religion in worship and observance; a prohibition against making precious-metal cult objects for one's own worship restricts a core practice of religious communities that employ sacred images, with corporal punishment as the enforcement mechanism.
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Article 18
This framework classifies the relation as a substantive tension.
ICCPR Article 18(1) protects freedom to manifest religion in practice; enforcing this prohibition coercively against practitioners of image-based religions violates that right when the prohibition is given state or communal sanction.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as an incompatible method.
Violation carries thirty-nine lashes; no contemporary legal system imposes corporal punishment for manufacturing religious or decorative objects, whether for personal use or commercial sale.
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Article 7
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
ICCPR Article 7 prohibits cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment; thirty-nine lashes for the act of crafting or commissioning a religious object constitutes such treatment.
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rabbinic tradition
This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.
Malkot requires a functioning Sanhedrin; the corporal sanction is de facto suspended, though the prohibition on manufacturing images remains operative in Orthodox halakha.