The German translation reads “Du sollst keine anderen Götter neben mir haben” so “[…] no other gods besides me”, which explicitly forbids paying homage to other gods.

The joke hinges on misusing an alternate meaning to an English word that is a translation already from ancient Hebrew. Of course, some people will read this comic and think they discovered some profound contradiction…

“I am the Lord thy God who brought you out of the land of Egypt out of the house of slavery and you shall have no other gods before me”

That’s not a mistranslation, that’s the entire first commandment. The old testament openly acknowledges the “existence” of competing deities.

Remember that when this was written down for the first time, it was super strange to have only one all powerful God. There were hundreds of gods that the Jews would have been at least aware of. Even if the whole Exodus thing is not accurate to Jewish history in particular, which it likely isn’t, no one but the Jews had only one God they prayed to. At the time, you prayed to whoever you thought got that particular job done. The first commandment says no, set them all aside and worship me and me alone.

Which is exactly why the second commandment is about not making idols.

Also the whole Egypt thing was probably the Hitites, who got diaspora’d and many of whom probably ended up finding the Jewish people and integrated with them. There’s literally 0 physical evidence of large scale Jewish enslavement in ancient Egypt.

At the time, you prayed to whoever you thought got that particular job done

Then Catholics came along and replaced this with patron saints.

(technically Catholics believe they are asking the patron to intercede and advocate for whatever the devotee is asking for, but it’s still funny to me that they still fill the roles of the lesser gods of antiquity)