¹³ The carpenter stretches a line, marks it out with a stylus, fashions it with planes, and marks it with a compass; he makes it in human form, with human beauty, to be set up in a shrine.^(A)

⁴ So when he returned the money to his mother, his mother took two hundred pieces of silver and gave it to the silversmith, who made it into an idol of cast metal, and it was in the house of Micah. ⁵ This man Micah had a shrine, and he made an ephod and teraphim and installed one of his sons, who became his priest.^(A)

²³ and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles.^(A)

²⁹ “Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals.^(A)

¹² Then he said to me, “Mortal, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the dark, each in his room of images? For they say, ‘The Lord does not see us; the Lord has forsaken the land.’ ”

²⁴ He replied, “You take my gods that I made and the priest and go away, and what have I left? How then can you ask me, ‘What is the matter?’ ”^(A)

¹⁵ “ ‘Cursed be anyone who makes an idol or casts an image, anything abhorrent to the Lord, the work of an artisan, and sets it up in secret.’ All the people shall respond, saying, ‘Amen!’^(A)

²⁸ There you will serve gods made by human hands, objects of wood and stone that neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell.^(A)