Psalms 115:8

I hate those who regard lying vanities, but I trust in Yahweh.

They bear it on their shoulder. They carry it, and set it in its place, and it stands there. It cannot move from its place. Yes, one may cry to it, yet it can not answer. It cannot save him out of his trouble.

“For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the spring of living waters, and cut out cisterns for themselves: broken cisterns that can’t hold water.

Now, you want to be gone, because you greatly longed for your father’s house, but why have you stolen my gods?”

They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God. They have provoked me to anger with their vanities. I will move them to jealousy with those who are not a people. I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation.

As soon as Gideon was dead, the children of Israel turned again and played the prostitute following the Baals, and made Baal Berith their god.

Don’t turn away to go after vain things which can’t profit or deliver, for they are vain.

Haven’t you known? Haven’t you heard? The everlasting God, Yahweh, the Creator of the ends of the earth, doesn’t faint. He isn’t weary. His understanding is unsearchable.

Behold, you are nothing, and your work is nothing. He who chooses you is an abomination.

“But where are your gods that you have made for yourselves? Let them arise, if they can save you in the time of your trouble; for you have as many gods as you have towns, O Judah.

Every man has become brutish and without knowledge. Every goldsmith is disappointed by his engraved image; for his molten image is falsehood, and there is no breath in them.

They are vanity, a work of delusion. In the time of their visitation they will perish.

My people, what have I done to you? How have I burdened you? Answer me!

Therefore concerning the eating of things sacrificed to idols, we know that no idol is anything in the world, and that there is no other God but one.

The man Micah had a house of gods, and he made an ephod, and teraphim, and consecrated one of his sons, who became his priest.

Those who make them will be like them, yes, everyone who trusts in them.

Then I said, “Lord, how long?” He answered, “Until cities are waste without inhabitant, houses without man, the land becomes utterly waste,

Behold, all of their deeds are vanity and nothing. Their molten images are wind and confusion.

Let all the nations be gathered together, and let the peoples be assembled. Who among them can declare this, and show us former things? Let them bring their witnesses, that they may be justified, or let them hear, and say, “That is true.”

They will be disappointed, yes, confounded, all of them. Those who are makers of idols will go into confusion together.

Listen to me, you stubborn-hearted, who are far from righteousness!

“For my people are foolish. They don’t know me. They are foolish children, and they have no understanding. They are skillful in doing evil, but they don’t know how to do good.”

For the customs of the peoples are vanity; for one cuts a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman with the ax.

“ ‘Moreover I will make you a desolation and a reproach among the nations that are around you, in the sight of all that pass by.

All her idols will be beaten to pieces, and all her temple gifts will be burned with fire, and all her images I will destroy; for of the hire of a prostitute has she gathered them, and to the hire of a prostitute shall they return.”

It will come to pass in that day, says Yahweh of Armies, that I will cut off the names of the idols out of the land, and they will be remembered no more. I will also cause the prophets and the spirit of impurity to pass out of the land.

Yet he didn’t leave himself without witness, in that he did good and gave you rains from the sky and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.”

Because knowing God, they didn’t glorify him as God, and didn’t give thanks, but became vain in their reasoning, and their senseless heart was darkened.

and if you shall reject my statutes, and if your soul abhors my ordinances, so that you will not do all my commandments, but break my covenant,

I will destroy your high places, and cut down your incense altars, and cast your dead bodies upon the bodies of your idols; and my soul will abhor you.

There you shall serve gods, the work of men’s hands, wood and stone, which neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell.

They gave him seventy pieces of silver out of the house of Baal Berith, with which Abimelech hired vain and reckless fellows who followed him.

He said, “You have taken away my gods which I made, and the priest, and have gone away! What more do I have? How can you ask me, ‘What ails you?’ ”

for all the sins of Baasha, and the sins of Elah his son, which they sinned, and with which they made Israel to sin, to provoke Yahweh, the God of Israel, to anger with their vanities.

Their sorrows shall be multiplied who give gifts to another god. Their drink offerings of blood I will not offer, nor take their names on my lips.

Let all them be shamed who serve engraved images, who boast in their idols. Worship him, all you gods!

The rest of it he makes into a god, even his engraved image. He bows down to it and worships, and prays to it, and says, “Deliver me; for you are my god!”

They don’t know, neither do they consider: for he has shut their eyes, that they can’t see; and their hearts, that they can’t understand.

Bel bows down. Nebo stoops. Their idols are carried by animals, and on the livestock. The things that you carried around are heavy loads, a burden for the weary.

They stoop and they bow down together. They could not deliver the burden, but they have gone into captivity.

Behold, all you who kindle a fire, who adorn yourselves with torches around yourselves, walk in the flame of your fire, and among the torches that you have kindled. You will have this from my hand: you will lie down in sorrow.

Therefore the Lord Yahweh says, “Behold, my servants will eat, but you will be hungry; behold, my servants will drink, but you will be thirsty. Behold, my servants will rejoice, but you will be disappointed;

Yahweh says, “What unrighteousness have your fathers found in me, that they have gone far from me, and have walked after worthless vanity, and have become worthless?

Because she took her prostitution lightly, the land was polluted, and she committed adultery with stones and with wood.

The wise men are disappointed. They are dismayed and trapped. Behold, they have rejected Yahweh’s word. What kind of wisdom is in them?

They are like a palm tree, of turned work, and don’t speak. They must be carried, because they can’t move. Don’t be afraid of them; for they can’t do evil, neither is it in them to do good.”

For the shepherds have become brutish, and have not inquired of Yahweh. Therefore they have not prospered, and all their flocks have scattered.

Yahweh, my strength, and my stronghold, and my refuge in the day of affliction, the nations will come to you from the ends of the earth, and will say, “Our fathers have inherited nothing but lies, vanity and things in which there is no profit.

Your altars will become desolate, and your incense altars will be broken. I will cast down your slain men before your idols.

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I will also reject you, that you may be no priest to me. Because you have forgotten your God’s law, I will also forget your children.

“What value does the engraved image have, that its maker has engraved it; the molten image, even the teacher of lies, that he who fashions its form trusts in it, to make mute idols?

For the teraphim have spoken vanity, and the diviners have seen a lie; and they have told false dreams. They comfort in vain. Therefore they go their way like sheep. They are oppressed, because there is no shepherd.

‘Cursed is the man who makes an engraved or molten image, an abomination to Yahweh, the work of the hands of the craftsman, and sets it up in secret.’ All the people shall answer and say, ‘Amen.’

When all the men of the tower of Shechem heard of it, they entered into the stronghold of the house of Elberith.

Then Micah said, “Now I know that Yahweh will do good to me, since I have a Levite as my priest.”

They rejected his statutes, and his covenant that he made with their fathers, and his testimonies which he testified to them; and they followed vanity, and became vain, and followed the nations that were around them, concerning whom Yahweh had commanded them that they should not do like them.

Yahweh rejected all the offspring of Israel, afflicted them, and delivered them into the hands of raiders, until he had cast them out of his sight.

“Nevertheless they were disobedient, and rebelled against you, cast your law behind their back, killed your prophets that testified against them to turn them again to you, and they committed awful blasphemies.

Haven’t you known? Haven’t you heard? Haven’t you been told from the beginning? Haven’t you understood from the foundations of the earth?

Everyone who makes a carved image is vain. The things that they delight in will not profit. Their own witnesses don’t see, nor know, that they may be disappointed.

“Assemble yourselves and come. Draw near together, you who have escaped from the nations. Those have no knowledge who carry the wood of their engraved image, and pray to a god that can’t save.

“Remember this, and show yourselves men. Bring it to mind again, you transgressors.

However I sent to you all my servants the prophets, rising up early and sending them, saying, “Oh, don’t do this abominable thing that I hate.”

Because you have burned incense, and because you have sinned against Yahweh, and have not obeyed Yahweh’s voice, nor walked in his law, nor in his statutes, nor in his testimonies; therefore this evil has happened to you, as it is today.”

“Every man has become brutish without knowledge. Every goldsmith is disappointed by his image; for his molten image is falsehood, and there is no breath in them.

In all your dwelling places, the cities will be laid waste and the high places will be desolate; that your altars may be laid waste and made desolate, and your idols may be broken and cease, and your incense altars may be cut down, and your works may be abolished.

with whom the kings of the earth committed sexual immorality. Those who dwell in the earth were made drunken with the wine of her sexual immorality.”

But they are together brutish and foolish, instructed by idols! It is just wood.

Those who regard lying vanities forsake their own mercy.