Forged in the furnace

Deuteronomy 4:20 uses an arresting image to describe the exodus: “Yahweh has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace, from Egypt, to be a people for His own possession.”

The context is crucial.  Yahweh is warning about making graven images (vv. 16-18, 23) and about turning to heavenly bodies in worship (v. 19).  ”Don’t forge idols in your furnaces,” Yahweh says, but instead remember that I forged you in the factory of Egypt.

It’s not that there are no graven images of Yahweh on earth.  Israel isn’t supposed to make any images because Yahweh Himself forged an image, and it’s Israel.

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