What?

You are not to make an image of anything in the heavens above, on the earth below, or in the waters beneath.

It is a matter of opinion whether this stricture is intended to stand alone,
Or to be combined with the next sentence,
The injunction against worshipping such images,
Islamic art avoids likenesses. Christian art embraces them.

The tendency to idolatry was not hidden.
The complaining Israelites made the calf, after all.
But later, when beset by snakes, God tells Moses to make a bronze serpent,
So the people would look at it and be healed.

I understand the foreshadowing of the suffering symbol,
Christ on the cross,
That we all look to him and are healed.
Exercise faith: a look can be effectual.

But … really? With their history,
God tells Moses to make a graven image for the people to look at?

And we know that the story doesn’t end with healing.
It ends long after, in the days of Hezekiah,
When the serpent, now named Nehushtan, and worshipped,
Is finally destroyed.

This is a story that makes me say,
“What?”