Idolatry in OT

Idolatry among the Gentiles

Jdg 11:24; Jdg 16:23–24; 2 Ki 5:18; Is 36:18–20; Is 37:38; Is 46:1; Eze 8:14; Ac 14:11–13; 1 Co 8:5

Idolatry among God’s people

In patriarchal times

Joshua 24:2 ESV

And Joshua said to all the people, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Long ago, your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates, Terah, the father of Abraham and of Nahor; and they served other gods.

See also Ge 31:30; Ge 31:34 these household gods may have been either masks or statuettes; Ge 35:2

In the Mosaic period

Exodus 32:4 ESV

And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf. And they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!”

In the period of the judges

Judges 17:5 ESV

And the man Micah had a shrine, and he made an ephod and household gods, and ordained one of his sons, who became his priest.

See also Jdg 10:6

In the early monarchy

1 Kings 11:10 ESV

and had commanded him concerning this thing, that he should not go after other gods. But he did not keep what the Lord commanded.

See also 1 Ki 12:28 The golden calves were perhaps pedestals on which the Lord was thought to sit.

In the middle monarchy

1 Ki 16:33 An Asherah pole was probably a crude carved wooden image of a Canaanite fertility goddess.

See also 1 Ki 11:7–8; 1 Ki 16:32

In the late monarchy

2 Kings 21:2–6 ESV

And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, according to the despicable practices of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel. For he rebuilt the high places that Hezekiah his father had destroyed, and he erected altars for Baal and made an Asherah, as Ahab king of Israel had done, and worshiped all the host of heaven and served them. And he built altars in the house of the Lord, of which the Lord had said, “In Jerusalem will I put my name.” And he built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the Lord. And he burned his son as an offering and used fortune-telling and omens and dealt with mediums and with necromancers. He did much evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger.

After the fall of Jerusalem

Ezekiel 8:10 ESV

So I went in and saw. And there, engraved on the wall all around, was every form of creeping things and loathsome beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel.

See also Eze 8:3; Eze 8:14; Eze 8:16

Objects of false worship

The sun, moon and stars

Deuteronomy 4:19 ESV

And beware lest you raise your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, you be drawn away and bow down to them and serve them, things that the Lord your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven.

See also Dt 17:3; Job 31:26

Other objects of worship

Deuteronomy 4:28 ESV

And there you will serve gods of wood and stone, the work of human hands, that neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell.

See also Dt 16:22 sacred stones; 1 Ki 12:31 high places; Is 1:29 oaks

Practices associated with idolatry

The burning of children

2 Kings 23:10 ESV

And he defiled Topheth, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, that no one might burn his son or his daughter as an offering to Molech.

The superstitious use of religious symbols

2 Kings 18:4 ESV

He removed the high places and broke the pillars and cut down the Asherah. And he broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had made offerings to it (it was called Nehushtan).

See also Jdg 8:27 The ephod was a priestly garment sometimes subject to excessive veneration.

Sexual deviance

Deuteronomy 23:17 ESV

“None of the daughters of Israel shall be a cult prostitute, and none of the sons of Israel shall be a cult prostitute.

See also 1 Ki 14:24; Ho 4:14