Exodus 20:5

God forbids bowing to idols, declaring Himself jealous and visiting iniquity on generations that hate Him. Idolatry provokes God and brings lasting consequences.

Cross-references · 40

• Deut 5:9You shall not bow yourself down to them, nor serve them; for I, Yahweh, your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, and on the third and on the fourth generation of those who hate me;
• Num 14:18‘Yahweh is slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness, forgiving iniquity and disobedience; and that will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and on the fourth generation.’
• Deut 4:24For Yahweh your God is a devouring fire, a jealous God.
• Exod 34:14for you shall worship no other god: for Yahweh, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.
• Josh 24:19Joshua said to the people, “You can’t serve Yahweh, for he is a holy God. He is a jealous God. He will not forgive your disobedience nor your sins.
• Exod 34:6–7Yahweh passed by before him, and proclaimed, “Yahweh! Yahweh, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness and truth,
• Deut 6:15for Yahweh your God among you is a jealous God; lest the anger of Yahweh your God be kindled against you, and he destroy you from off the face of the earth.
• Isa 65:6–7“Behold, it is written before me: I will not keep silence, but will repay, yes, I will repay into their bosom,
• Ps 109:14Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered by Yahweh. Don’t let the sin of his mother be blotted out.
• Josh 23:7that you not come among these nations, these that remain among you; neither make mention of the name of their gods, nor cause to swear by them, neither serve them, nor bow down yourselves to them;
• Jer 32:18who show loving kindness to thousands, and recompense the iniquity of the fathers into the bosom of their children after them; the great, the mighty God, Yahweh of Armies is his name;
• Nah 1:2Yahweh is a jealous God and avenges. Yahweh avenges and is full of wrath. Yahweh takes vengeance on his adversaries, and he maintains wrath against his enemies.
• Exod 23:24You shall not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor follow their practices, but you shall utterly overthrow them and demolish their pillars.
• Ps 79:8Don’t hold the iniquities of our forefathers against us. Let your tender mercies speedily meet us, for we are in desperate need.
• Num 14:33Your children shall be wanderers in the wilderness forty years, and shall bear your prostitution, until your dead bodies are consumed in the wilderness.
• Jer 2:9“Therefore I will yet contend with you,” says Yahweh, “and I will contend with your children’s children.
• Matt 23:34–36Therefore behold, I send to you prophets, wise men, and scribes. Some of them you will kill and crucify; and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues, and persecute from city to city;
• Isa 14:20–21You will not join them in burial, because you have destroyed your land. You have killed your people. The offspring of evildoers will not be named forever.
• Job 5:4His children are far from safety. They are crushed in the gate. Neither is there any to deliver them,
• Lev 26:39–40Those of you who are left will pine away in their iniquity in your enemies’ lands; and also in the iniquities of their fathers they shall pine away with them.
• Jas 4:4You adulterers and adulteresses, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
• Rom 8:7because the mind of the flesh is hostile towards God; for it is not subject to God’s law, neither indeed can it be.
• Lev 26:1“‘You shall make for yourselves no idols, and you shall not raise up an engraved image or a pillar, and you shall not place any figured stone in your land, to bow down to it; for I am Yahweh your God.
• Ps 81:15The haters of Yahweh would cringe before him, and their punishment would last forever.
• 2 Kgs 23:26Notwithstanding, Yahweh didn’t turn from the fierceness of his great wrath, with which his anger burned against Judah, because of all the provocation with which Manasseh had provoked him.
• Judg 2:19But when the judge was dead, they turned back, and dealt more corruptly than their fathers in following other gods to serve them, and to bow down to them. They didn’t cease what they were doing, or give up their stubborn ways.
• Isa 44:19No one thinks, neither is there knowledge nor understanding to say, “I have burned part of it in the fire. Yes, I have also baked bread on its coals. I have roasted meat and eaten it. Shall I make the rest of it into an abomination? Shall I bow down to a tree trunk?”
• Josh 23:16when you disobey the covenant of Yahweh your God, which he commanded you, and go and serve other gods, and bow down yourselves to them. Then Yahweh’s anger will be kindled against you, and you will perish quickly from off the good land which he has given to you.”
• Isa 44:15Then it will be for a man to burn; and he takes some of it, and warms himself. Yes, he burns it, and bakes bread. Yes, he makes a god, and worships it; he makes it an engraved image, and falls down to it.
• 2 Sam 21:6let seven men of his sons be delivered to us, and we will hang them up to Yahweh in Gibeah of Saul, the chosen of Yahweh.” The king said, “I will give them.”
• John 15:23–24He who hates me, hates my Father also.
• 1 Kgs 21:29“See how Ahab humbles himself before me? Because he humbles himself before me, I will not bring the evil in his days; but I will bring the evil on his house in his son’s day.”
• 2 Kgs 17:35with whom Yahweh had made a covenant, and commanded them, saying, “You shall not fear other gods, nor bow yourselves to them, nor serve them, nor sacrifice to them;
• 2 Sam 21:1There was a famine in the days of David for three years, year after year; and David sought the face of Yahweh. Yahweh said, “It is for Saul, and for his bloody house, because he put the Gibeonites to death.”
• Lev 20:5then I will set my face against that man, and against his family, and will cut him off, and all who play the prostitute after him, to play the prostitute with Molech, from among their people.
• Deut 32:21They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God. They have provoked me to anger with their vanities. I will move them to jealousy with those who are not a people. I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation.
• Deut 7:10and repays those who hate him to their face, to destroy them. He will not be slack to him who hates him. He will repay him to his face.
• Job 21:19You say, ‘God lays up his iniquity for his children.’ Let him recompense it to himself, that he may know it.
• 2 Kgs 17:41So these nations feared Yahweh, and also served their engraved images. Their children likewise, and their children’s children, as their fathers did, so they do to this day.
• Prov 6:34–35For jealousy arouses the fury of the husband. He won’t spare in the day of vengeance.

Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.