Velo-takim lecha matsevah asher sane YHVH Eloheycha.
Neither shall you set yourself up a pillar; which YHVH your Elohim hates.

A "Matzevah" is a structure usually built for idol-worship. We are not allowed to construct a "Matzevah" even if we intend to serve YHVH with it.

The King James Version translates it "image", but it is better translated as pillar.

It might be described as a column. Thus, the "image" has no form, human or otherwise.

Some say that it is a monolith used for sacrifices (Rashi; Radak, Sherashim; Ibn Janach; Sefer Mitzvoth Gadol, Negative 44). Others say that it is a structure built as a focus for worship (Yad, Avodath Kokhavim 6:6; Ralbag; Chinukh 493). Any pillar erected for a remembrance of religious ideologies is a violation of this mitzvah.

It was a practice common among the pagans.

Shemot (Exodus) 23:24  You shall not bow down to their elohim, nor serve them, nor follow their practices, but you shall utterly overthrow them and demolish their pillars.

It is a practice that YHVH hates.

Devarim (Deuteronomy) 12:31  You shall not do so to YHVH your Elohim: for every abomination to YHVH, which he hates, have they done to their elohim; for even their sons and their daughters do they burn in the fire to their elohim.

We should not treat YHVH the way the pagans treat their elohim.

It is interesting to note that the patriarchs did put up pillars (Matzevah). (See Bereshit/Genesis 28:18, 31:34, 35:14, Shemot/Exodus 24:4). Howver, that the patriarchs did not use the pillars for sacrifices, but merely as a sign (Abarbanel). But in time, these did become places of idolatry. (Sifri; Rashi)

Genesis 28:18  Ya'akov rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put under his head, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil on the top of it.

Genesis 31:13  I am the God of Beit-El, where you anointed a pillar, where you vowed a vow to me. Now arise, get out from this land, and return to the land of your birth.?"

Here the matzevah was a place for making a vow to YHVH, rather than for sacrifice.

But in later years, Beit-El becomes a place of idolatry.

Micah 5:13  I will cut off your engraved images and your pillars out of your midst; and you shall no more worship the work of your hands.

This is the key.... The pillar becomes a focus of worship.

Sha'ul stood in the middle of the Areopagus, and said, "You men of Athens, I perceive that you are very religious in all things. For as I passed along, and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar (bomos - a stand of adoration) with this inscription: 'TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.' What therefore you worship in ignorance, this I announce to you. The Elohim who made the world and all things in it, he, being Adonai of heaven and earth, doesn't dwell in temples made with hands, neither is he served by men's hands, as though he needed anything, seeing he himself gives to all life and breath, and all things. He made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the surface of the earth, having determined appointed seasons, and the boundaries of their dwellings, that they should seek the Lord, if perhaps they might reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 'For in him we live, and move, and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'For we are also his offspring.' Being then the offspring of Elohim, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold, or silver, or stone, engraved by art and design of man. The times of ignorance therefore Elohim overlooked. But now he commands that all people everywhere should repent, because he has appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by the man whom he has ordained; of which he has given assurance to all men, in that he has raised him from the dead." (Acts 17:22-31 HNV)

The Temple and the Tabernacle are a model of heavenly things, therefore, we don't deviate from this model.