On the Idolatry of the Hebrews
John Mackenzie, D. D. Deuteronomy 5:7 You shall have none other gods before me. The proneness of the Hebrew nation to fall into idolatry presents to us a very extraordinary appearance. The Jews were, indeed, a gross people, but not more so than other nations in the same period of improvement. On the contrary, they appear to have been more civilised than their contemporaries, and the very foundation of the difficulty is that they were infinitely more enlightened. I. In the first place, we may believe that THE CAUSES, WHATEVER THEY WERE, WHICH INFLUENCED ALL THE OTHER NATIONS OF THE EARTH IN THAT PERIOD, AND LED THEM TO IDOLATRY, OPERATED ALSO UPON THE HEBREW NATION. One of the first errors of men in religion probably was that the Supreme God was too great to trouble Himself with the affairs of this lower world. Hence flowed easily all the other errors. The first idolatry was a mixed idolatry. It did not exclude the true God. It only associated other gods with Him. At last He was forgotten, while they continued to be remembered. Here, then, we may search for one cause of idolatry among the Hebrews. We must also mention the rage of the times as another cause. While the idea was yet new, mankind were universally employed in developing it; and while they were intent on fixing the administration, and marking the different departments of the supreme government, they received every new divinity who was offered to them with all the ardour of a new discovery. The pleasure of the process was correspondent. It gratified the imagination by peopling all nature with ideal beings, and it flattered men's ideas of the various and the vast by showing that their number, their natures, and their employments might be infinitely multiplied. We may join to these considerations the indulgence which this religion offered to the passions. II. But the Hebrews were not only influenced by causes common to them with all the nations of the earth in that period, BUT ALSO BY CAUSES WHICH WERE PECULIAR TO THEIR OWN NATION. 1. Their local situation. They were placed between two powerful empires, the Egyptian and the Assyrian. The fame of these two powerful nations was well known to the Hebrews, and they aspired to share it. Accustomed to ascribe everything to Divine agency, it would occur to them that the cause of their greatness must be owing to the gods whom they worshipped, and that, if they revered the same gods, they might have the same success. 2. But the chief cause of the repeated lapses of the Hebrews into idolatry lay deeper. We must search for it in their civil constitution and the political parties of their state. The institution of the kingly office produced a material change in the government of the Hebrews. It immediately gave rise to two great political parties, which continued to distract the state from the reign of Saul until the Babylonish captivity. The original government of the Hebrews was a theocracy. This was the legal principle from which their laws and constitution, both civil and religious, flowed. The kings of the Hebrews were not kings in any sense in which that word is now used. The Supreme Being was the real legislator; their kings were mere substitutes of the Sovereign, and were understood to act under His appointments. Whenever a king of bad principles arose, who wished to aggrandise his own power and to free himself from the authority of his superior, the first measure which he would adopt for this purpose would be to withdraw the nation as much as possible from the reverence which they owed to God Almighty. This he could not do better than by introducing a number of other gods and leading the nation to offer worship to them. Men arranged themselves on the one side or the other, not only according to their political views, but also according to their characters and dispositions. Idolatry would attract the young and the inexperienced, who admired the great empires, and would consequently be ambitious of imitating them. Idolatry would also attract all the vicious and the sensual, who were under the dominion of the grosser passions, and world therefore naturally lean to the religion which indulged them. The Hebrew idolaters did not mean to exclude their own God. They only joined other gods with Him. They might probably, too, admit that their own God was the greatest, or even that He was supreme God, and the rest His ministers. By these or other means they might reconcile idolatry to their own worship. (John Mackenzie, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Thou shalt have none other gods before me. WEB: "You shall have no other gods before me.