The Difficult 2nd Commandment

The second commandment reads:

⁴ “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; ⁵ you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. (Ex. 20:4-5)

I find this very confusing.

Note that it is actually two, two, two commandments in one. ¹

The first "subcommandment" is:

SUBCOMMANDMENT 2.1: 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.

This would include, taken at face value, your album of wedding pictures and pictures of your children and your pets.  (The language implies that carved images are being called out as the contemporary gross offenders, but the wording is careful to include, under the same restriction, any likeness on any past, present, or future media) This is important: many want to limit the application of this commandment to deities real or imagined--but the text of  2.1 provides no basis for such a narrow view.  In fact the text goes the extra 3520 cubits ² to prescribe a universal domain of application, i.e. "likeness of anything; in the sky or on the land or in the water" .

Then we have:

SUBCOMMANDMENT 2.2: You shall not bow down to them or serve (worship) them.

Herein lies the difficulty for me.  First, a trivial problem: If 2.1 means you can't make an image, then why worry about worshiping it?  Well, because someone else might have made it.³

Less trivial is this, and it is vital: For purposes of establishing a violation of the 2^nd Commandment, is 2.2 sufficient, or is it sufficient and necessary?

I think we would all agree that it is sufficient.  That worshipping Micky Mantle on his Topps 1952 rookie baseball card, or an image of a blue-eyed Jesus on black velvet is not just bad taste but idolatry and under condemnation.

But the only way of avoiding your family "likenesses" from causing you a problem, because they are certainly covered by 2.1, is if 2.2 is also necessary. That is, you're good as long as you don't worship those baby pictures (or baseball cards).

But that leaves us with the question of images of Jesus or God. If 2.2 is necessary, and I think it must be, then is it obvious that you cannot have an image of Jesus (let's say a print of a masterpiece painting) that is not an object of worship but rather an object of art, or commemoration, or a reminder?

It is not obvious to me.

It really is impossible to parse this commandment as it often gets parsed, i.e. don't make any images of Jesus or God, often to include the wearing of crosses. The only way you can support that view is if you can argue that all images of Jesus are, by default and without exception, bowed down to by their holders. I don't buy it. I think those who say that they can have an image of Jesus and not be in violation of the 2^nd commandment are correct.

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¹ Really showing my age. This is from certs mints advertising. See wiki, which tells us: the phrase "Two, two, two [insert almost any word or short phrase here] in one" remained an American idiomatic expression into the 21st Century.

² 3520 cubits = 1 mile.

³ In fact, the story of "render unto Caesar" takes a richer meaning knowing that some Jews would not even touch a denarius, not because it had Caesar's image but because it had an image, period. They did not limit the application of the 2nd Commandment to images of God. They were right, at least in that regard. And this would have further vexed them when they tried to trap Jesus with the tax conundrum, because how could they not but agree with Jesus' solution of getting rid of the abominations (as they viewed them) by giving them back to Caesar?