Artistic representations of one's deity, especially a god that is unseen and unknowable, can create many tensions and conflicts within a religion. Questions arise as to what they should look like, how they should look, how many of what item, where they should be located, etc. Political agendas then become an important factor in who should be involved with the maintainance and creation of them, as well as the way they are described in the writings that are preserved for posterity. All of these issues are dealt with in the Hebrew Bible, from Genesis to the Prophets.

The importance of the role of the altar goes all the way back to Abraham, who built an altar to God, in order to sacrifice his son Isaac, at a pre-existing shrine (Gen 22:4). The image of the altar is a very important one, as it was the center of worship for the entirety of this section of the Bible. Until Exodus 27 there is no specific instructions on what God's altar is supposed to look like. Here he tells Moses very specifically that it is to be of wood, and that it should have horns on the four corners. These "horns" are assumed to be part of the imagery of the Israelite God as the young bull. It is in Ex 28 that he also give specific instructions on how the priests are to dress. Other temple instruments, like the tabernacle itself, and the lamps God designs are also decorated, the lamps to look like almond blossoms, and the tabernacleto have images of cherubim worked itnoit, and another spot for the altar itself with Cherubim.

This association and representation of God as parallel with the bull is not a problem until Aaron and the golden calf incident happens in Exodus 32. This happens just after God gets through explaining to Moses that there should be no other gods, and not to make metal idols. This incident is held up for comparason throughout the rest of the Bible, whenever any of the elements of Baal worship comes into the Israelite religion without God's permission.

Throughout the Old Testament, we see the Israelites slipping back into the worship of Baal, and every time this happens there is discussion of the imagery of Baal as the bull, which is somehow different than the images of Yahweh as the young male calf, whose horns are on the corners of the altar. Often this heresy is seen as the work of a woman or the influence of foreigners. With this often comes the punishment of the ban, or the loss of a battle. This is most clearly demonstrated in the situation with Jeroboam's creation of the golden calves and declaration of their worship and his woman who is both foreign and a Baal worshipper. A way to politically damage someone was to accuse him of worshipping idols, even if it happened many centuries after the fact.

While there are specific laws against the worship of false idols and especially gods other than Yahweh who were supposed to reside in, or be these statues, there are laws that describe very clearly how one was supposed to worship, and the images that were acceptable. One of these symbols was the pillar or stone set up as an altar or monument to God and his works. The stones that are erected in Josh 24, andthe 12 pillars for the 12 tribes of Israel in Ex. 25:4 are examples of the images of God that are acceptable, because they are not in the image of any beast or god. How this is different iconographically from the sacred pole of Baal in Judges 6:25 and in 1 Kings 14:23 where sacred pillars and shrines are erected is unclear. Judah worships the other gods along with Yahweh, for which it is punishedby losing favor with God and eventually losing in war to King Baasha of Israel.

Ultimately the decision of those who were deemed idolators and who was cursed for the "possession" of false idols was in the hands of the priests and the prophets. Because God was constantly giving new information as to how to worship and where, and other laws were constantly being ammended based on prophecy, these prophets came under close scrutiny and discrimination. These decisions were being made by the kings, the ruling, wealthy class, and we know the writings in the Bible are very political, and often the final editon of the "truth" got made hundreds of years afer an event happened. So it is hard to be sure of what was actually going on as far as the worship of these other gods. The priestly class, who would also have been part of the decision making process could have had it's own agendas.

Those accused of idolatry were often blamed for the defeat of Jerusalem in battle. The entire concept of holy war brings in the notion of the divine warrior, and God's role as a judge and jury of who should win any given battle, depending on who in the story was the "better" choice. When battle gets brought in, this of course brings in the subject of the ban, and Israel's occasional unfathful disregard for it. This role of God as a warrior is very different from the other images of him, and can be much more closely related to the images of the other gods, who often go to war with each other. This image of Yahweh as a warrior god is further supportedby the importance of the ban in this context, and the way in which the betrayal of the ban was treated. The loss of an important battle had to be explained someohw, and one of the easiest, that made the most sense was that Israel had somehow broken part of it's covenant with God, by worshipping these "false idols."

The distinction between God displaying a facet of his relationship with Israel that was similar to the other mesopotamian gods, and the actual worship of Baal was minimal, and possibly overlooked. It was qften percieved that certain icons and images and representationsof god were actually those of idols, most often of Baal. This may or may not have been influenced by political agendas of priests and/or kings, so that the past reflected the present.

One gets the impression that the Israelite religion kept slipping back into its pagan roots, and overlapping with it's contemporary religion, the "cult" of Baal. This was seen as a betrayal of the covenant with Yahweh by the Israelites, and therefore needed to be dealt with, and explained, and punished. One of the ways this was done was to attribute the loss of a battle to the unfaithfulness of a king's religion, or the people's worship of a foreign god. Evidence of this unfaithfulness and worship is found throughout the bible, and is most clearly expressed through the presence of images and icons that are considered to be idolatrous, since God says in the commandments to Moses "You must not make a carved image for yourself, nor the likeness of anything in the heavens above, or on the earth below, or the waters under the earth. You must not bow down to them inworship; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sins of the parents..." (Ex 20:4-5).