Wisdom 14:9-31

Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition

⁹ For equally hateful to God are the ungodly man and his ungodliness,
¹⁰ for what was done will be punished together with him who did it.
¹¹ Therefore there will be a visitation also upon the heathen idols,
because, though part of what God created, they became an abomination,
and became traps for the souls of men
and a snare to the feet of the foolish.

¹² For the idea of making idols was the beginning of fornication,
and the invention of them was the corruption of life,
¹³ for neither have they existed from the beginning
nor will they exist for ever.
¹⁴ For through the vanity of men they entered the world,
and therefore their speedy end has been planned.
¹⁵ For a father, consumed with grief at an untimely bereavement,
made an image of his child, who had been suddenly taken from him;
and he now honored as a god what was once a dead human being,
and handed on to his dependents secret rites and initiations.
¹⁶ Then the ungodly custom, grown strong with time, was kept as a law,
and at the command of monarchs graven images were worshiped.
¹⁷ When men could not honor monarchs^[a] in their presence, since they lived at a distance,
they imagined their appearance far away,
and made a visible image of the king whom they honored,
so that by their zeal they might flatter the absent one as though present.
¹⁸ Then the ambition of the craftsman impelled
even those who did not know the king to intensify their worship.
¹⁹ For he, perhaps wishing to please his ruler,
skilfully forced the likeness to take more beautiful form,
²⁰ and the multitude, attracted by the charm of his work,
now regarded as an object of worship the one whom shortly before they had honored as a man.
²¹ And this became a hidden trap for mankind,
because men, in bondage to misfortune or to royal authority,
bestowed on objects of stone or wood the name that ought not to be shared.