Those who fashion a graven image are all of them futile, and their precious things are of no profit; even their own witnesses fail to see or know, so that they will be put to shame.

For the customs of the peoples are

delusion;

Because it is wood cut from the forest,
The work of the hands of a craftsman with a cutting tool.

“What profit is the idol when its maker has carved it,
Or an image, a teacher of falsehood?
For its maker trusts in his own handiwork
When he fashions speechless idols.

Being then the children of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and thought of man.

You see and hear that not only in Ephesus, but in almost all of

Asia, this Paul has persuaded and turned away a considerable number of people, saying that

gods made with hands are no gods at all.

The calf

Their heart is

faithless;

Now they must bear their guilt.

The Lord will break down their altars

And destroy their sacred pillars.

And I shall set fire to the temples of the gods of Egypt, and he will burn them and take them captive. So he will wrap himself with the land of Egypt as a shepherd wraps himself with his garment, and he will depart from there safely.

“Declare and proclaim among the nations.
Proclaim it and lift up a standard.
Do not conceal it but say,
‘Babylon has been captured,

Bel has been put to shame, Marduk has been shattered;

Her images have been put to shame, her idols have been shattered.’

Shall

Furthermore, the altar that was at Bethel and the high place which Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel sin, had made, even that altar and the high place he broke down. Then he

demolished its stones, ground them to dust, and burned the Asherah.

Now when all this was finished, all Israel who were present went out to the cities of Judah, broke the pillars in pieces, cut down the Asherim and pulled down the high places and the altars throughout all Judah and Benjamin, as well as in Ephraim and Manasseh, until they had destroyed them all. Then all the sons of Israel returned to their cities, each to his possession.

In the cities of Manasseh, Ephraim, Simeon, even as far as Naphtali, in their surrounding ruins,

General references

As for the

idol, a craftsman casts it,

A goldsmith plates it with gold,
And a silversmith fashions chains of silver.

Can man make gods for himself?
Yet they are not gods!