Trust in God, Not Idols

¹Again, a person preparing to set sail on a voyage over raging waves

calls upon a piece of wood more fragile than the ship that carries him.

²For it was the desire for profit that planned the vessel,

and wisdom was the craftsmen who built it.

³But it is steered by your providence, O Father,

for you have made a path for it even in the sea,

and a safe way over the waves.

⁴This shows that you can save people from every danger,

so that even an inexperienced person can make a sea voyage.

⁵For you want people to use the objects produced through your wisdom.

So people trust their lives even to the smallest piece of wood;

they pass over the waves on a raft and arrive safely on land.

⁶Even from the beginning, when the proud giants were being destroyed,

Noah, the hope of the world, took refuge on a raft,

and you led him to produce a new human race.

⁷For blessed is the wooden object by which righteousness comes.

⁸But the idol that is made by hands is cursed,

and so is the one who made it.

The person is cursed because he made the idol,

and the perishable idol is cursed because it is called a god.

⁹For equally hateful to God are the wicked and their wicked deeds.

¹⁰Both the thing that was made and the one who made it will be punished.

¹¹Therefore, pagan idols will be condemned

because they have become a terrible sin, even though they belong to God’s creation.

They are snares for human souls,

and a trap for the feet of the foolish.

The Origin of Idolatry

¹²Immorality came about when idols were first made,

and life was corrupted by their invention.

¹³They did not exist from the beginning,

nor will they last forever.

¹⁴Futile thinking brought them into the world,

and swift destruction is planned for them.

¹⁵For a father, mourning the untimely death of his child,

made an image of the child who had been suddenly snatched from him.

He then worshiped as a god the image of a corpse

and devised secret rites and initiations for his household.

¹⁶The wicked custom became established over time and was regarded as a law.

Carved images of tyrants were worshiped at their command.

¹⁷Some people could not honor the rulers in person since they lived far away.

So they imagined what the rulers looked like

and made a visible image of the king they wished to honor.

They did this to flatter the king as though he were present.

¹⁸Then even those who did not know the king

were spurred on to worship him—all because of the artisan’s ambition.

¹⁹For he, perhaps wishing to please his ruler,

labored with all his skill to make the likeness even more beautiful than the actual person.

²⁰Then the masses, carried away by the beauty of the work,

decided to worship the one they had honored as a mere mortal just a short time before.

²¹And this became a trap for people;

in their bondage to misfortune or tyranny,

they gave objects of stone or wood the name “God”—

a name that is not to be shared with others.

The Evils of Idolatry

²²It was not enough for them to hold misconceptions about God.

They also live in great conflict due to ignorance,

and they call such evils peace.

²³For they kill children in their initiation rituals and celebrate secret mysteries;

they hold frenzied orgies with strange practices.

²⁴They keep neither their own lives nor their marriages pure,

for they treacherously kill each other or harm each other by adultery.

²⁵Everything is chaos—

blood and murder, theft and deceit,

corruption, unfaithfulness, riots, lying,

²⁶confusion over what is good, neglect of favors,

corruption of souls, sexual perversion,

disorder in marriages, adultery, and shameless living.

²⁷For the worship of nameless idols is the source and cause and result of every evil.

²⁸The worshipers become intoxicated with festivity,

or they prophesy lies, live wicked lives, or readily break oaths.

²⁹Because they trust in lifeless idols,

they swear falsely and expect to suffer no harm for it.

³⁰But for two things they will be justly punished:

because they misunderstood God when they worshiped idols,

and because they made false oaths since they despised what is holy.

³¹For the wicked and their sins are pursued

not by the power of the things by which people swear

but by the just punishment of sinners.