Leviticus 19:4

19:4 Do not turn to idols, ¹  and you must not make for yourselves gods of cast metal. I am the Lord your God.

Psalms 115:4-8

115:4 Their ²  idols are made of silver and gold –

they are man-made. ³ 

115:5 They have mouths, but cannot speak,

eyes, but cannot see,

115:6 ears, but cannot hear,

noses, but cannot smell,

115:7 hands, but cannot touch,

feet, but cannot walk.

They cannot even clear their throats. ⁴ 

115:8 Those who make them will end up ⁵  like them,

as will everyone who trusts in them.

Isaiah 44:9-20

44:9 All who form idols are nothing;

the things in which they delight are worthless.

Their witnesses cannot see;

they recognize nothing, so they are put to shame.

44:10 Who forms a god and casts an idol

that will prove worthless? ⁶ 

44:11 Look, all his associates ⁷  will be put to shame;

the craftsmen are mere humans. ⁸ 

Let them all assemble and take their stand!

They will panic and be put to shame.

44:12 A blacksmith works with his tool ⁹ 

and forges metal over the coals.

He forms it ¹⁰  with hammers;

he makes it with his strong arm.

He gets hungry and loses his energy; ¹¹ 

he drinks no water and gets tired.

44:13 A carpenter takes measurements; ¹² 

he marks out an outline of its form; ¹³ 

he scrapes ¹⁴  it with chisels,

and marks it with a compass.

He patterns it after the human form, ¹⁵ 

like a well-built human being,

and puts it in a shrine. ¹⁶ 

44:14 He cuts down cedars

and acquires a cypress ¹⁷  or an oak.

He gets ¹⁸  trees from the forest;

he plants a cedar ¹⁹  and the rain makes it grow.

44:15 A man uses it to make a fire; ²⁰ 

he takes some of it and warms himself.

Yes, he kindles a fire and bakes bread.

Then he makes a god and worships it;

he makes an idol and bows down to it. ²¹ 

44:16 Half of it he burns in the fire –

over that half he cooks ²²  meat;

he roasts a meal and fills himself.

Yes, he warms himself and says,

‘Ah! I am warm as I look at the fire.’

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. ²³ 

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?’ ²⁴ 

44:20 He feeds on ashes; ²⁵ 

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?’ ²⁶ 

Jeremiah 10:10-14

10:10 The Lord is the only true God.

He is the living God and the everlasting King.

When he shows his anger the earth shakes.

None of the nations can stand up to his fury.

10:11 You people of Israel should tell those nations this:

‘These gods did not make heaven and earth.

They will disappear ²⁷  from the earth and from under the heavens.’ ²⁸ 

10:12 The Lord is the one who ²⁹  by his power made the earth.

He is the one who by his wisdom established the world.

And by his understanding he spread out the skies.

10:13 When his voice thunders, ³⁰  the heavenly ocean roars.

He makes the clouds rise from the far-off horizons. ³¹ 

He makes the lightning flash out in the midst of the rain.

He unleashes the wind from the places where he stores it. ³² 

10:14 All these idolaters ³³  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. ³⁴ 

There is no breath in any of those idols. ³⁵ 

Acts 19:26

19:26 And you see and hear that this Paul has persuaded ³⁶  and turned away ³⁷  a large crowd, ³⁸  not only in Ephesus ³⁹  but in practically all of the province of Asia, ⁴⁰  by saying ⁴¹  that gods made by hands are not gods at all. ⁴² 

Acts 19:1

Disciples of John the Baptist at Ephesus

19:1 While ⁴³  Apollos was in Corinth, ⁴⁴  Paul went through the inland ⁴⁵  regions ⁴⁶  and came to Ephesus. ⁴⁷  He ⁴⁸  found some disciples there ⁴⁹ 

Colossians 1:4

1:4 since ⁵⁰  we heard about your faith in Christ Jesus and the love that you have for all the saints.

[19:4]  ¹ sn Regarding the difficult etymology and meaning of the term for “idols” (אֱלִילִים, ’elilim), see B. A. Levine, Leviticus (JPSTC), 126; J. E. Hartley, Leviticus (WBC), 304; N. H. Snaith, Leviticus and Numbers (NBC), 89; and Judith M. Hadley, NIDOTTE 1:411. It appears to be a diminutive play on words with אֵל (’el, “god; God”) and, perhaps at the same time, recalls a common Semitic word for “worthless; weak; powerless; nothingness.” Snaith suggests a rendering of “worthless godlings.”

[115:4]  ² tn The referent of the pronominal suffix is “the nations” (v. 2).

[115:4]  ³ tn Heb “the work of the hands of man.”

[115:7]  ⁴ tn Heb “they cannot mutter in their throats.” Verse 5a refers to speaking, v. 7c to inarticulate sounds made in the throat (see M. Dahood, Psalms [AB], 3:140-41).

[115:8]  ⁵ 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.”

[44:10]  ⁶ tn The rhetorical question is sarcastic. The sense is, “Who is foolish enough…?”

[44:11]  ⁷ tn The pronoun “his” probably refers to the one who forms/casts an idol (v. 10), in which case it refers to the craftsman’s associates in the idol-manufacturing guild.

[44:11]  ⁸ sn The point seems to be this: If the idols are the mere products of human hands, then those who trust in them will be disappointed, for man-made gods are incapable of helping their “creators.”

[44:12]  ⁹ tn The noun מַעֲצָד (ma’atsad), which refers to some type of tool used for cutting, occurs only here and in Jer 10:3. See HALOT 615 s.v. מַעֲצָד.

[44:12]  ¹⁰ tn Some English versions take the pronoun “it” to refer to an idol being fashioned by the blacksmith (cf. NIV, NCV, CEV). NLT understands the referent to be “a sharp tool,” which is then used by the carpenter in the following verse to carve an idol from wood.

[44:12]  ¹¹ tn Heb “and there is no strength”; NASB “his strength fails.”

[44:13]  ¹² tn Heb “stretches out a line” (ASV similar); NIV “measures with a line.”

[44:13]  ¹³ tn Heb “he makes an outline with the [?].” The noun שֶׂרֶד (shered) occurs only here; it apparently refers to some type of tool or marker. Cf. KJV “with a line”; ASV “with a pencil”; NAB, NRSV “with a stylus”; NASB “with red chalk”; NIV “with a marker.”

[44:13]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “works” (so NASB) or “fashions” (so NRSV); NIV “he roughs it out.”

[44:13]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “he makes it like the pattern of a man”; NAB “like a man in appearance.”

[44:13]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “like the glory of man to sit [in] a house”; NIV “that it may dwell in a shrine.”

[44:14]  ¹⁷ tn It is not certain what type of tree this otherwise unattested noun refers to. Cf. ASV “a holm-tree” (NRSV similar).

[44:14]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “strengthens for himself,” i.e., “secures for himself” (see BDB 55 s.v. אָמֵץ Pi.2).

[44:14]  ¹⁹ tn Some prefer to emend אֹרֶן (’oren) to אֶרֶז (’erez, “cedar”), but the otherwise unattested noun appears to have an Akkadian cognate, meaning “cedar.” See H. R. Cohen, Biblical Hapax Legomena (SBLDS), 44-45. HALOT 90 s.v. I אֹרֶן offers the meaning “laurel.”

[44:15]  ²⁰ tn Heb “and it becomes burning [i.e., firewood] for a man”; NAB “to serve man for fuel.”

[44:15]  ²¹ tn Or perhaps, “them.”

[44:16]  ²² tn Heb “eats” (so NASB); NAB, NRSV “roasts.”

[44:18]  ²³ tn Heb “for their eyes are smeared over so they cannot see, so their heart cannot be wise.”

[44:19]  ²⁴ 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]  ²⁵ tn Or perhaps, “he eats on an ash heap.”

[44:20]  ²⁶ tn Heb “Is it not a lie in my right hand?”

[10:11]  ²⁷ tn Aram “The gods who did not make…earth will disappear…” The sentence is broken up in the translation to avoid a long, complex English sentence in conformity with contemporary English style.

[10:11]  ²⁸ tn This verse is in Aramaic. It is the only Aramaic sentence in Jeremiah. Scholars debate the appropriateness of this verse to this context. Many see it as a gloss added by a postexilic scribe which was later incorporated into the text. Both R. E. Clendenen (“Discourse Strategies in Jeremiah 10,” JBL 106 [1987]: 401-8) and W. L. Holladay (Jeremiah [Hermeneia], 1:324-25, 334-35) have given detailed arguments that the passage is not only original but the climax and center of the contrast between the Lord and idols in vv. 2-16. Holladay shows that the passage is a very carefully constructed chiasm (see accompanying study note) which argues that “these” at the end is the subject of the verb “will disappear” not the attributive adjective modifying heaven. He also makes a very good case that the verse is poetry and not prose as it is rendered in the majority of modern English versions.

[10:12]  ²⁹ tn The words “The Lord is” are not in the text. They are implicit from the context. They are supplied in the translation here because of the possible confusion of who the subject is due to the parenthetical address to the people of Israel in v. 11. The first two verbs are participles and should not merely be translated as the narrative past. They are predicate nominatives of an implied copula intending to contrast the Lord as the one who made the earth with the idols which did not.

[10:13]  ³⁰ tn Heb “At the voice of his giving.” The idiom “to give the voice” is often used for thunder (cf. BDB 679 s.v. נָתַן Qal.1.x).

[10:13]  ³¹ tn Heb “from the ends of the earth.”

[10:13]  ³² tn Heb “he brings out the winds from his storehouses.”

[10:14]  ³³ 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]  ³⁴ tn Or “nothing but a phony god”; Heb “a lie/falsehood.”

[10:14]  ³⁵ 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.

[19:26]  ³⁶ tn Grk “persuading.” The participle πείσας (peisa") has been translated as a finite verb due to requirements of contemporary English style.

[19:26]  ³⁷ tn Or “misled.”

[19:26]  ³⁸ tn BDAG 472 s.v. ἱκανός 3.a has “of pers. ὄχλος a large crowd…Ac 11:24, 26; 19:26.”

[19:26]  ³⁹ map For location see JP1 D2; JP2 D2; JP3 D2; JP4 D2.

[19:26]  ⁴⁰ tn Grk “Asia”; see the note on this word in v. 22.

[19:26]  ⁴¹ tn The participle λέγων (legwn) has been regarded as indicating instrumentality.

[19:26]  ⁴² tn The words “at all” are not in the Greek text but are implied.

[19:1]  ⁴³ tn Grk “It happened that while.” The introductory phrase ἐγένετο (egeneto, “it happened that”), common in Luke (69 times) and Acts (54 times), is redundant in contemporary English and has not been translated.

[19:1]  ⁴⁴ map For location see JP1 C2; JP2 C2; JP3 C2; JP4 C2.

[19:1]  ⁴⁵ tn Or “interior.”

[19:1]  ⁴⁶ tn BDAG 92 s.v. ἀνωτερικός has “upper τὰ ἀ. μέρη the upper (i.e. inland) country, the interior Ac 19:1.”

[19:1]  ⁴⁷ map For location see JP1 D2; JP2 D2; JP3 D2; JP4 D2.

[19:1]  ⁴⁸ tn Grk “and found.” Because of the length of the Greek sentence and the sequencing with the following verse the conjunction καί (kai) has not been translated here. Instead a new English sentence is begun.

[19:1]  ⁴⁹ tn The word “there” is not in the Greek text but is implied.

[1:4]  ⁵⁰ tn The adverbial participle ἀκούσαντες (akousante") is understood to be temporal and translated with “since.” A causal idea may also be in the apostle’s mind, but the context emphasizes temporal ideas, e.g., “from the day” (v. 6).