338 JILL MIDDLEMAS “through working and reworking, [these metaphors] created a new God, who differs substantially from other biblical depictions of the deity” 64. Given that the divine similes appear within collections of material that resist iconism or the creation and worship of idols, that is, deities represented by fixed shapes, typically, but not exclusively in anthro- poid forms, the rhetoric functions as a way of dissuading idolatry, but through a rhetorical strategy that differs from prohibition and declara- tions of incomparability. They stress multiplying the ways of thinking of the divine in order to prevent the stabilization or the dominance of a single divine image into a man or a king, for example. Divine image approximations in the prophetic literature stem from human, animal, plant, and inanimate realms. Moreover, they represent distinct forms as well as formlessness. II Prophetic Aniconic Rhetoric and the Imago Dei When we consider representations of the divine image and divine images in the prophetic literature as a whole, we find two distinct and interrelated strategies: specificity and diversity. Specifically, the im- ages employed in worship are targeted through various rhetorical strategies that deride the statues, giving great attention to the human role in manufacture, the materials used in their construction, and the inability of the idols to live, move, or effect change. At the same time, the prophetic writers make it very clear that the God of the Old Testa- ment literature has a specific form, which I refer to, from time to time, as a body. To my mind, it is not corporeal, although some scholars have argued that it is 65. What can be agreed, however, is that the deity enters space and time in a specific form. In the prophetic literature, that body or form is sometimes portrayed as humanoid in shape. This is where Second Isaiah and Genesis agree. But the humanoid shape cannot be said to have a specific gender, and this is also where Second Isaiah and Genesis agree. furthermore, the incomparability passages in Second Isaiah leave open the question of whether the deity actually had a form that could not be made. This openness is closed down in 64 BRETTLER, “Incompatible Metaphors”, 120. Cf. DEL BRASSEy, Metaphor and the Incomparable God. 65 E.g. WEINfELD, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School, 198-209; SOMMER, Bodies of God, 1-10. Cf. R. KASHER, “Anthropomorphism, Holiness and Cult: A New Look at Ezekiel 40–48”, ZAW 110 (1998) 192-208, here 192.