NOTES for Isa 40:18

In the biblical books, the expressions "image of God" and "likeness of God" often occur. On the other hand, the prophets said more than once that God has and can have no image, reminding people of the meaning of the second commandment of the Decalogue. Of course, this commandment refers in particular to sacred statues and sacred images, so widely spread among all pagan peoples both in antiquity and in modern times. But the issue, as we can see, is not only images of gods that have nothing to do with the One. The story of the golden calf comes to mind involuntarily: after all, the Jews demanded of Aaron that he "make" for them not some pagan god, but a metal image of the One who had brought the people out of Egypt. Yet this did not reduce at all the anger of Moses when he came down from the mountain.

Why is that? Perhaps because the image of the sacred bull symbolized Apis, or Baal, or someone else unknown, but only not the God of Abraham and Moses? And in the mass religious consciousness, unfortunately, neither Apis nor Baal ever rises to the God of Abraham. But the God of Abraham almost inevitably gets lowered to Apis. And then Yahwism turns into paganism covered with a monotheistic wrapper, the worst kind of paganism possible: open paganism, after all, does not claim to be the only true faith; it does not present itself as monotheism. But paganism born inside a monotheistic tradition demands the same attitude toward itself as toward what gave birth to it, deceitfully appropriating the worship owed to the God of Abraham. And under the appearance of a path leading to truth, it offers the worshiper a path into a spiritual dead end.