How Important Was Bowing Down to Jehovah Alone?
When a Jew would bend their knees, it was to worship Jehovah only. We see this in the following.
In the book of Esther, the Jews called Mordecai, a man under law, refused to bow to Haman. Mordecai’s worship was meant for Jehovah alone. But rather than punish Mordecai, Haman sought something far more perfect, a total genocide, the entire destruction of all Jews throughout the Persian Empire. What was at first personal between the two became a decree of destruction. With the King Xerxes’s (Ahasuerus’s) approval, Haman set a date for annihilation, sealing the fate of the Jewish people with the casting of lots (in Hebrew, purim). Lots remains a Jewish Holy day celebrated to this day.
So the old Jew Mordecai was willing to sacrifice millions of his people, because he would not bend his knee to a man.
Why Did Mordecai Refuse to Bow?
Bowing was a gesture of respect throughout the ancient courts, but what Haman demanded crossed the line into idolatry, making Mordecai’s resistance a necessity.
Mordecai’s refusal to bow to Haman was rooted in Jewish law which forbids idolatry. The Torah forbids bowing to anything or anyone in a manner that suggests worship.
Exodus 20:5, “You shall not bow down to them nor serve them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God …”
Haman was making himself an object of worship, demanding divine worship. Bowing to Haman wasn’t mere etiquette for Mordecai, it was idol worship, something no Jew would do.
For a second example of Jews keeping the law, and not bowing to men or images, let’s take a look at Daniel’s three friends. King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon built an image of gold, and without exceptions, everyone within hearing range of the music was to bow down and worship the king’s image. But three Jewish boys, Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego refused. Nebuchadnezzar burned with rage and commanded that the three be thrown into a fiery furnace. We know the rest of the story. The King looked into the fire and saw four men walking in the fire, then said, “We cast three men bound into the midst of the Fire? I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and have not been hurt: the form of the fourth is like the Son of God.”
In Daniel 6, King Darius set up three presidents (overseers) of which Daniel was first, and that the princes of each province would give account to them. Because they were jealous of Daniel’s position, the Persians “consulted together to establish a royal statute that, whosoever shall ask a petition of any God or man for thirty days, except for the King, he shall be cast into the den of lions.”
In Daniel 6:10, Daniel bowed his knees three times that day, and prayed, and gave thanks before God, as he had been doing.” When the King was told, because of his decree, he had to have Daniel cast into the den of lions.
In all three of the above cases, Jews who love the LORD and kept his commandments were willing to give up their lives and the lives of their own countrymen to worship Jehovah only.