The Stick Gods

10 1-5 Listen to the Message that God is sending your way, House of Israel. Listen most carefully:

“Don’t take the godless nations as your models.
    Don’t be impressed by their glamour and glitz,
    no matter how much they’re impressed.
The religion of these peoples
    is nothing but smoke.
An idol is nothing but a tree chopped down,
    then shaped by a woodsman’s ax.
They trim it with tinsel and balls,
    use hammer and nails to keep it upright.
It’s like a scarecrow in a cabbage patch—can’t talk!
    Deadwood that has to be carried—can’t walk!
Don’t be impressed by such stuff.
    It’s useless for either good or evil.”

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For the customs of the people are vain:
for one cutteth a tree out of the forest,
the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe.
They deck it with silver and with gold;
they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not.
They are upright as the palm tree, but speak not:
they must needs be borne, because they cannot go.
Be not afraid of them; for they cannot do evil,
neither also is it in them to do good.

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He mea teka noa hoki nga tikanga a nga iwi: e tapahia ana hoki e tetahi he rakau i roto i te ngahere, he mahi na nga ringa o te kaimahi, ki te titaha.

Kei te whakapaipai i taua mea ki te hiriwa, ki te koura, whakamau rawa ki nga titi, ki nga hama, te taea te whakakorikori.

He rite aua mea ki te nikau, i ata mahia, kahore ia he kupu; me amo, he kore no ratou e haere. Kaua e wehi i a ratou, no te mea e kore e taea e ratou te kino, kahore hoki e ahei i a ratou te mea i te pai.

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