Obedience and Loyalty to Israel’s Unique God: The historical recollections now give place to urgent exhortation.

4:15–20 This specific warning against idolatry is prefaced with a reminder of the point just made, you saw no form (v. 15). Any attempt, therefore, to make an image as an object of or aid to worship, was bound to be inadequate. But the reason for the prohibition should be carefully expressed. Sometimes it is claimed that Israel here affirmed an invisible deity, as against visible idols. Or that the contrast is between God as spiritual and idols as material. But neither of these two contrasts is what the text stresses. In the context of verses 12ff., the contrast is not between visible and invisible, or between spiritual and material, but between the visible and the audible. Idols…