292. This commandment, "There shall be no other God in My presence" means also in the natural sense, that no man dead or living should be worshiped as a god. This, too, was done in Asia and in various surrounding countries. Many of the gods of the heathen were simply men, as Baal, Ashtaroth, Chemosh, Milcom, Beelzebub; and at Athens and Rome, Saturn, Jupiter, Neptune, Pluto, Apollo, Pallas, and so forth. Some of these were worshiped first as saints, then as divinities and finally as gods. That they also worshiped living men as gods, appears from the edict of Darius the Mede,
That for thirty days no man should ask anything from God, but from the king only; otherwise, he should be cast into a den of lions (Dan. 6:8-28).
