20 Bible Verses about Abandoning Idols

You must burn up the carved images of their gods. Don’t covet the silver and gold on the images and take it for yourself, or else you will be ensnared by it, for it is abhorrent to the Lord your God.

Wherever you live the cities will be in ruins and the high places will be desolate, so that your altars will lie in ruins and be desecrated, your idols smashed and obliterated, your incense altars cut down, and your works wiped out.

He banished the male cult prostitutes from the land and removed all of the idols that his fathers had made.

He removed the high places, shattered the sacred pillars, and cut down the Asherah poles. He broke into pieces the bronze snake that Moses made, for the Israelites burned incense to it up to that time. He called it Nehushtan.

He did away with the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun. They had been at the entrance of the Lord’s temple in the precincts by the chamber of Nathan-melech the court official, and he burned up the chariots of the sun.

In addition, Josiah removed the mediums, the spiritists, household idols, images, and all the detestable things that were seen in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem. He did this in order to carry out the words of the law that were written in the book that Hilkiah the priest found in the Lord’s temple.

He will take even their gods captive to Egypt, with their metal images and their precious articles of silver and gold. For some years he will stay away from the king of the North,

For even if they flee from devastation,
Egypt will gather them, and Memphis will bury them.
Thistles will take possession of their precious silver;
thorns will invade their tents.

All her carved images will be smashed to pieces;
all her wages will be burned in the fire,
and I will destroy all her idols.
Since she collected the wages of a prostitute,
they will be used again for a prostitute.

I will remove your carved images
and sacred pillars from you
so that you will not bow down again
to the work of your hands.

The Lord has issued an order concerning you:

There will be no offspring
to carry on your name.
I will eliminate the carved idol and cast image
from the house of your gods;
I will prepare your grave,
for you are contemptible.

The Philistines abandoned their idols there, and David and his men carried them off.

On that day people will throw
their silver and gold idols,
which they made to worship,
to the moles and the bats.

Then you will defile your silver-plated idols and your gold-plated images. You will throw them away like menstrual cloths, and call them filth.

For on that day, every one of you will reject the silver and gold idols that your own hands have sinfully made.

Therefore, look, the days are coming—
this is the Lord’s declaration—
when I will punish her carved images,
and the wounded will groan
throughout her land.

Therefore, look, the days are coming
when I will punish Babylon’s carved images.
Her entire land will suffer shame,
and all her slain will lie fallen within her.

Look, riders come—
horsemen in pairs.”
And he answered, saying,
“Babylon has fallen, has fallen.
All the images of her gods
have been shattered on the ground.”

This is what the Lord God says:

I will destroy the idols and put an end
to the false gods in Memphis.
There will no longer be
a prince from the land of Egypt.
So I will instill fear in that land.

On that day”—this is the declaration of the Lord of Hosts—“I will erase the names of the idols from the land, and they will no longer be remembered. I will remove the prophets and the unclean spirit from the land.