Home -- Content: Series 7 (Laws) -- Translation: English -- Book: 1 (Tora) -- Part: 2 (Negative) -- Prohibition: 5 -- Text
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The Sharia of Moses in the TORA
Part 2 - The 365 Prohibitions of the Tora
5 - BOWING DOWN TO AN IDOL
Exodus 22:20 -- “He who sacrifices to any god, except to the LORD only, he shall be utterly destroyed.”
Exodus 20:5 -- “You shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me”
Leviticus 17:7 -- “They shall no more offer their sacrifices to demons, after whom they have played the harlot. This shall be a statute forever for them throughout their generations.”
Deuteronomy 12:30 -- “Take heed to yourself that you are not ensnared to follow them, after they are destroyed from before you, and that you do not inquire after their gods, saying, 'How did these nations serve their gods? I also will do likewise.'”
Included under this term is the tossing of the blood of a sacrifice before an idol*. The commandment also applies to one who deifies any object whatever.**
* As e.g. one who picks up a brick and says, “Thou art my god.” (Sanh. 60a, Sonc. ed. pp. 410f
** Mishneh Torah, Mada, Hilchoth Abodath Kochabim II, 4
“Acceptance of idolatry is tantamount to repudiating the whole Torah, the Prophets and everything that they were commanded, from Adam to the end of time.”*
* Sanhedrin 64b (Sonc. ed. p. 441f)