Wisdom 14:19-21

Common English Bible

¹⁹ Perhaps out of a desire to please the person in power, the artist makes the most of his artistic skill to fashion an even more beautiful and perfect image. ²⁰ The masses, charmed by the object’s workmanship, now begin to consider the object worthy of their worship, where not long before they had only honored the person as a human being.

²¹ In this way idolatry becomes a trap for one’s life. Whether it is because of a father’s misfortune or because people are ordered to do so, stones and plants begin to be called by the name that was never supposed to be shared with anything or anyone else.