---
title: Exodus 20:4
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/exodus-20-4/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/exodus-20-4.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: Exodus 20:4
testament: OT
section: Law
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# Exodus 20:4

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in the heavens above, on the earth below, or in the waters beneath.

## JW Usage

JWs read the second commandment as prohibiting the making of any religious image or likeness — full stop. The cross, religious statues, and icons are all condemned as violations. Displaying a representation of Christ or a cross is treated as equivalent to idol worship, regardless of whether the object receives veneration. The Watchtower applies this to reject the cross as a pagan symbol and to condemn all representational religious art.

## Protestant Usage

Numbers 21:8 is the decisive text: Jehovah himself commanded Moses to "make a copper serpent and put it on a pole." Seven hundred years later, Hezekiah destroyed it — not because it was an image but because "the Israelites had been burning incense to it" (2 Kings 18:4). The Watchtower's own Insight on the Scriptures acknowledges this. The same God who gave Exodus 20:4 commanded golden cherubim on the ark (Exodus 25:18-22), cherubim woven into the tabernacle curtains (Exodus 26:1), and a temple filled with carved lions, oxen, and palm trees (1 Kings 6-7). If the second commandment forbade all representational art, the tabernacle would have been the most idolatrous building on earth. The prohibition is on worship-images — objects made to receive veneration — not on representation per se. In John 3:14, Jesus used the commanded copper serpent as a prophetic type of his own crucifixion: "just as Moses lifted up the serpent."

## Arguments Using This Verse

- [The Cross Is Not Pagan — And Paul Boasted In It](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/cross-pagan-symbol-rebuttal.md) — Galatians 6:14 / 1 Corinthians 1:18 / Colossians 2:14 [Practice]
- [Images Are Not the Problem — Worship Is](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/images-in-worship-protestant-response.md) — Numbers 21:8 / 2 Kings 18:4 / Exodus 25:18 [Practice]