Idolatry Forbidden

15 (A)“Therefore watch yourselves very carefully. Since (B)you saw no form on the day that the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire, 16 beware (C)lest you act corruptly (D)by making a carved image for yourselves, in the form of any figure, (E)the likeness of male or female, 17 the likeness of any animal that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the air, 18 the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water under the earth. 19 And beware lest you raise your eyes to heaven, and when you see (F)the sun and the moon and the stars, (G)all the host of heaven, you be drawn away and bow down to them and serve them, things that the Lord your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven.

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18 (A)To whom then will you liken God,
    (B)or what likeness compare with him?
19 (C)An idol! A craftsman casts it,
    and a goldsmith overlays it with gold
    and casts for it silver chains.
20 (D)He who is too impoverished for an offering
    chooses wood[a] that will not rot;
he seeks out a skillful craftsman
    to set up an idol that will not move.

21 (E)Do you not know? Do you not hear?
    Has it not been told you from the beginning?
    Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?
22 It is he who sits above the circle of the earth,
    and its inhabitants are (F)like grasshoppers;
(G)who stretches out the heavens like a curtain,
    and spreads them like a tent to dwell in;
23 (H)who brings princes to nothing,
    and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness.

24 Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown,
    scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth,
when he blows on them, and they wither,
    (I)and the tempest carries them off like stubble.

25 (J)To whom then will you compare me,
    that I should be like him? says the Holy One.

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Footnotes

  1. Isaiah 40:20 Or He chooses valuable wood

23 and (A)exchanged the glory of (B)the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

24 Therefore (C)God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to (D)the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves,

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29 (A)Being then God's offspring, (B)we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man.

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