Sforno on Deuteronomy 4:28/ספורנו על דברים ד׳:כ״ח

1ועבדתם שם אלוהים מעשה ידי אדם, when Jews find themselves outside of the land of Israel against their will and in the course of time they are invited by member of their host country, they are not guilty of deliberately performed idolatrous practices. (Avodah Zarah 8).

2אשר לא יראון, because they do not do what they do out of their own free will, as do the members of the host nations who by fashioning the same kinds of sculptures or drawing similar pictures do so as an act of admiration for the idols they worship. When the members of the host countries make such sculptures they mean to draw attention to the force in the universe which is responsible for such phenomena in our day and age. [in the author’s time, art, generally, was legitimate only if it claimed to represent matters compatible with the dogmas of the Church, for instance. Ed.] The members of the host countries labour under the mistaken belief that the “originators” of the phenomena they worship produced what they produced out of their own volition; they do not realise that these “originators” had been programmed to do this by G’d the Creator. They pray to these phenomena thinking that these have the power to help them. Moses, representing G’d, says that the fact is that no phenomenon in this physical universe is able to do anything unless it has first been sanctioned by G’d.