Yesaya 42:17-18

42:17 Those who trust in idols

will turn back and be utterly humiliated, ¹ 

those who say to metal images, ‘You are our gods.’”

The Lord Reasons with His People

42:18 “Listen, you deaf ones!

Take notice, ²  you blind ones!

Yesaya 44:17-20

44:17 With the rest of it he makes a god, his idol;

he bows down to it and worships it.

He prays to it, saying,

‘Rescue me, for you are my god!’

44:18 They do not comprehend or understand,

for their eyes are blind and cannot see;

their minds do not discern. ³ 

44:19 No one thinks to himself,

nor do they comprehend or understand and say to themselves:

‘I burned half of it in the fire –

yes, I baked bread over the coals;

I roasted meat and ate it.

With the rest of it should I make a disgusting idol?

Should I bow down to dry wood?’ ⁴ 

44:20 He feeds on ashes; ⁵ 

his deceived mind misleads him.

He cannot rescue himself,

nor does he say, ‘Is this not a false god I hold in my right hand?’ ⁶ 

Yesaya 46:7

46:7 They put it on their shoulder and carry it;

they put it in its place and it just stands there;

it does not ⁷  move from its place.

Even when someone cries out to it, it does not reply;

it does not deliver him from his distress.

Yesaya 48:7

48:7 Now they come into being, ⁸  not in the past;

before today you did not hear about them,

so you could not say,

‘Yes, ⁹  I know about them.’

Yesaya 48:1

The Lord Appeals to the Exiles

48:1 Listen to this, O family of Jacob, ¹⁰ 

you who are called by the name ‘Israel,’

and are descended from Judah, ¹¹ 

who take oaths in the name of the Lord,

and invoke ¹²  the God of Israel –

but not in an honest and just manner. ¹³ 

Kisah Para Rasul 18:26

18:26 He began to speak out fearlessly ¹⁴  in the synagogue, ¹⁵  but when Priscilla and Aquila ¹⁶  heard him, they took him aside ¹⁷  and explained the way of God to him more accurately.

Mazmur 115:8

115:8 Those who make them will end up ¹⁸  like them,

as will everyone who trusts in them.

Yeremia 2:27-28

2:27 They say to a wooden idol, ¹⁹  ‘You are my father.’

They say to a stone image, ‘You gave birth to me.’ ²⁰ 

Yes, they have turned away from me instead of turning to me. ²¹ 

Yet when they are in trouble, they say, ‘Come and save us!’

2:28 But where are the gods you made for yourselves?

Let them save you when you are in trouble.

The sad fact is that ²²  you have as many gods

as you have towns, Judah.

Yeremia 10:8

10:8 The people of those nations ²³  are both stupid and foolish.

Instruction from a wooden idol is worthless! ²⁴ 

Yeremia 10:14

10:14 All these idolaters ²⁵  will prove to be stupid and ignorant.

Every goldsmith will be disgraced by the idol he made.

For the image he forges is merely a sham. ²⁶ 

There is no breath in any of those idols. ²⁷ 

Yeremia 51:17-18

51:17 All idolaters will prove to be stupid and ignorant.

Every goldsmith will be disgraced by the idol he made.

For the image he forges is merely a sham.

There is no breath in any of those idols.

51:18 They are worthless, objects to be ridiculed.

When the time comes to punish them, they will be destroyed.

Habakuk 2:18-20

2:18 What good ²⁸  is an idol? Why would a craftsman make it? ²⁹ 

What good is a metal image that gives misleading oracles? ³⁰ 

Why would its creator place his trust in it ³¹ 

and make ³²  such mute, worthless things?

2:19 The one who says to wood, ‘Wake up!’ is as good as dead ³³  –

he who says ³⁴  to speechless stone, ‘Awake!’

Can it give reliable guidance? ³⁵ 

It is overlaid with gold and silver;

it has no life’s breath inside it.

2:20 But the Lord is in his majestic palace. ³⁶ 

The whole earth is speechless in his presence!” ³⁷ 

Roma 1:21-23

1:21 For although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or give him thanks, but they became futile in their thoughts and their senseless hearts ³⁸  were darkened. 1:22 Although they claimed ³⁹  to be wise, they became fools 1:23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for an image resembling mortal human beings ⁴⁰  or birds or four-footed animals ⁴¹  or reptiles.

[42:17]  ¹ tn Heb “be ashamed with shame”; ASV, NASB “be utterly put to shame.”

[42:18]  ² tn Heb “look to see”; NAB, NCV “look and see”; NRSV “look up and see.”

[44:18]  ³ tn Heb “for their eyes are smeared over so they cannot see, so their heart cannot be wise.”

[44:19]  ⁴ tn There is no formal interrogative sign here, but the context seems to indicate these are rhetorical questions. See GKC 473 §150.a.

[44:20]  ⁵ tn Or perhaps, “he eats on an ash heap.”

[44:20]  ⁶ tn Heb “Is it not a lie in my right hand?”

[46:7]  ⁷ tn Or perhaps, “cannot,” here and in the following two lines. The imperfect forms can indicate capability.

[48:7]  ⁸ tn Heb “are created” (so KJV, NASB, NIV, NRSV); NLT “They are brand new.”

[48:7]  ⁹ tn Heb “look”; KJV, NASB “Behold.”

[48:1]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “house of Jacob”; TEV, CEV “people of Israel.”

[48:1]  ¹¹ tc The Hebrew text reads literally “and from the waters of Judah came out.” מִמֵּי (mimme) could be a corruption of מִמְּעֵי (mimmÿ’e, “from the inner parts of”; cf. NASB, NIV, NLT, NRSV) as suggested in the above translation. Some translations (ESV, NKJV) retain the MT reading because the Qumran scroll 1QIsa^a, which corrects a similar form to “from inner parts of” in 39:7, does not do it here.

[48:1]  ¹² tn Heb “cause to remember”; KJV, ASV “make mention of.”

[48:1]  ¹³ tn Heb “not in truth and not in righteousness.”

[18:26]  ¹⁴ tn Or “boldly.” This is a frequent term in Acts (9:27-28; 13:46; 14:3; 19:8; 26:26).

[18:26]  ¹⁵ sn See the note on synagogue in 6:9.

[18:26]  ¹⁶ sn Priscilla and Aquila. This key couple, of which Priscilla was an important enough figure to be mentioned by name, instructed Apollos about the most recent work of God. See also the note on Aquila in 18:2.

[18:26]  ¹⁷ tn BDAG 883 s.v. προσλαμβάνω 3 has “take aside, mid. τινά someone…So prob. also Ac 18:26: Priscilla and Aquila take Apollos aside to teach him undisturbed.”

[115:8]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “will be.” Another option is to take the prefixed verbal form as a prayer, “may those who make them end up like them.”

[115:8]  sn Because the idols are lifeless, they cannot help their worshipers in times of crisis. Consequently the worshipers end up as dead as the gods in which they trust.

[2:27]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “wood…stone…”

[2:27]  ²⁰ sn The reference to wood and stone is, of course, a pejorative reference to idols made by human hands. See the next verse where reference is made to “the gods you have made.”

[2:27]  ²¹ tn Heb “they have turned [their] backs to me, not [their] faces.”

[2:28]  ²² tn This is an attempt to render the Hebrew particle כִּי (ki, “for, indeed”) contextually.

[10:8]  ²³ tn Or “Those wise people and kings are…” It is unclear whether the subject is the “they” of the nations in the preceding verse, or the wise people and kings referred to. The text merely has “they.”

[10:8]  ²⁴ tn Heb “The instruction of vanities [worthless idols] is wood.” The meaning of this line is a little uncertain. Various proposals have been made to make sense, most of which involve radical emendation of the text. For some examples see J. A. Thompson, Jeremiah (NICOT), 323-24, fn 6. However, this is probably a case of the bold predication that discussed in GKC 452 §141.d, some examples of which may be seen in Ps 109:4 “I am prayer,” and Ps 120:7 “I am peace.”

[10:14]  ²⁵ tn Heb “Every man.” But in the context this is not a reference to all people without exception but to all idolaters. The referent is made explicit for the sake of clarity.

[10:14]  ²⁶ tn Or “nothing but a phony god”; Heb “a lie/falsehood.”

[10:14]  ²⁷ tn Heb “There is no breath in them.” The referent is made explicit so that no one will mistakenly take it to refer to the idolaters or goldsmiths.

[2:18]  ²⁸ tn Or “of what value.”

[2:18]  ²⁹ tn Heb “so that the one who forms it fashions it?” Here כִּי (ki) is taken as resultative after the rhetorical question. For other examples of this use, see R. J. Williams, Hebrew Syntax, 73, §450.

[2:18]  ³⁰ tn Heb “or a metal image, a teacher of lies.” The words “What good is” in the translation are supplied from the previous parallel line. “Teacher of lies” refers to the false oracles that the so-called god would deliver through a priest. See J. J. M. Roberts, Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah (OTL), 126.

[2:18]  ³¹ tn Heb “so that the one who forms his image trusts in it?” As earlier in the verse, כִּי (ki) is resultative.

[2:18]  ³² tn Heb “to make.”

[2:19]  ³³ tn Heb “Woe [to] the one who says.” On the term הוֹי (hoy) see the note on the word “dead” in v. 6.

[2:19]  ³⁴ tn The words “he who says” in the translation are supplied from the previous parallel line.

[2:19]  ³⁵ tn Though the Hebrew text has no formal interrogative marker here, the context indicates that the statement should be taken as a rhetorical question anticipating the answer, “Of course not!” (so also NIV, NRSV).

[2:20]  ³⁶ tn Or “holy temple.” The Lord’s heavenly palace, rather than the earthly temple, is probably in view here (see Ps 11:4; Mic 1:2-3). The Hebrew word ֹקדֶשׁ (qodesh, “holy”) here refers to the sovereign transcendence associated with his palace.

[2:20]  ³⁷ tn Or “Be quiet before him, all the earth!”

[1:21]  ³⁸ tn Grk “heart.”

[1:22]  ³⁹ tn The participle φάσκοντες (faskonte") is used concessively here.

[1:23]  ⁴⁰ tn Grk “exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God in likeness of an image of corruptible man.” Here there is a wordplay on the Greek terms ἄφθαρτος (afqarto", “immortal, imperishable, incorruptible”) and φθαρτός (fqarto", “mortal, corruptible, subject to decay”).

[1:23]  ⁴¹ sn Possibly an allusion to Ps 106:19-20.