Deuteronomy 4:15-24
The unseen Lord must not be reduced to any created image, for He redeemed Israel from Egypt to belong to Him and guards His covenant worship with consuming, jealous holiness.
15 Be very careful, for you saw no kind of form on the day that Yahweh spoke to you in Horeb out of the middle of the fire,
16 lest you corrupt yourselves, and make yourself a carved image in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female,
17 the likeness of any animal that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the sky,
18 the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water under the earth;
19 and lest you lift up your eyes to the sky, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, even all the army of the sky, you are drawn away and worship them, and serve them, which Yahweh your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole sky.
20 But Yahweh has taken you, and brought you out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt, to be to him a people of inheritance, as it is today.
21 Furthermore Yahweh was angry with me for your sakes, and swore that I should not go over the Jordan, and that I should not go in to that good land which Yahweh your God gives you for an inheritance;
22 but I must die in this land. I must not go over the Jordan, but you shall go over and possess that good land.
23 Be careful, lest you forget the covenant of Yahweh your God, which he made with you, and make yourselves a carved image in the form of anything which Yahweh your God has forbidden you.
24 For Yahweh your God is a devouring fire, a jealous God.
The unseen LORD must not be reduced to any created image, for He redeemed Israel from Egypt to belong to Him and guards His covenant worship with consuming, jealous holiness.
Moses warns Israel that because they saw no form when the LORD spoke from the fire at Horeb, they must not corrupt themselves by making any image or worshiping the heavenly host, but must remember that the LORD redeemed them from Egypt to be His inheritance and that He is a consuming fire, a jealous God.
Moses addresses the new generation on the plains of Moab before entry into Canaan. Having recalled Horeb, he now presses the implication of what happened there: Israel heard the LORD's voice from the fire but saw no visible form. In a world filled with images, astral worship, and animal-like divine representations, Israel must be governed by the LORD's covenant revelation rather than by surrounding religious imagination.
Hear, Obey, and Do Not Forget: The Incomparable God and His Word
Moses closes his historical prologue with the most theologically dense argument in the first address: Israel's singular privilege is that the incomparable God spoke directly to them at Horeb, gave them righteous statutes, and remains near to them in every call — and this privilege makes their obedience, their memory, and their refusal to manufacture any image of God an absolute covenant obligation, with exile and return both held within the LORD's own sovereign plan.