[fidelis]

“the First Commandment doesn’t forbid the making of images; it forbids making them for the purpose of worshipping them”
No, there’s two sentences which both contain a prohibition on a different thing. Both are forbidden.

No, there is no punctuation in the original Hebrew; it is a translators choice. Likewise, even the numbering of the commandments came into practice and the verse numberings were added much later than that. The command to have no other gods and to make statues to worship them is clearly one commandment.

[Boogieman]

“No, there is no punctuation in the original Hebrew”

I’m afraid you’ll have to do better than that, since there are two subjects, two objects, two verbs, so there are clearly two sentences giving two prohibitions even if we didn’t have the punctuation to clue us in on that.