2 Kings 18:4
2 Kings 18:44He removed the high places, shattered the sacred pillars, and cut down the Asherah poles. He also demolished the bronze snake called Nehushtan that Moses had made, for up to that time the Israelites had burned incense to it.
The Watchtower cites Hezekiah's destruction of the bronze serpent in as proof that all religious images eventually become idolatrous and must be destroyed. In the rs framework (pp. 183-187), the verse supports a blanket ban on religious iconography — crosses, nativity scenes, paintings of Jesus, even stained glass. The logic is: if a God-commanded image could become an idol, ordinary religious art is worse, and Christians must dispose of all such items.
Read the text carefully — the NWT itself names the triggering condition. Hezekiah crushed the copper serpent "for down to that time the people of Israel had been making sacrificial smoke to it." The triggering condition is explicitly worship — sacrificial smoke. For seven hundred years — under Joshua, the judges, Samuel, David, Solomon, Jehoshaphat — the bronze serpent was preserved as a memorial and nobody destroyed it, because nobody was worshipping it. The moment the people began burning incense to it, Hezekiah acted.
The Watchtower's own Insight on the Scriptures "Copper Serpent" entry says it in the same words: Hezekiah destroyed it "because the people had made an idol of it." Same object. Righteous when commanded by Jehovah in . Righteous for seven centuries as a memorial and teaching aid. Destroyed only at the moment it became the focus of worship. The principle is not "images are forbidden." The principle is "worshipping images is forbidden." And in , Jesus himself takes the same commanded image as the prophetic type of his own crucifixion — which would be impossible if the image had been inherently idolatrous from the start.