Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 115:4
Their idols [are] silver and gold, the work of men’s hands.
4. Their idols ] i.e. the idols of the nations, as Psa 135:15, and the LXX and Jerome here, read.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
4 8. Do the heathen taunt us with the impotence of our God? What are their own gods? Nothing but their own handiwork, destitute of ordinary human senses, though represented with organs of sense. For similar sarcastic descriptions of idols and the contrast between them and the living God, see Isa 44:9-20; Jer 10:1-16 Deu 4:28; Isa 2:20; Hab 2:18-19; Wis 15:15 . The passage recurs in Psa 135:15-18. Observe how completely the Psalmist identifies the god with the image: it has no separate existence.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Their idols – Their gods – the gods which they worship, as contrasted with the God whom we adore. The design of this description Psa 115:4-8 is to show the utter vanity of trusting in such gods, and to lead the people of Israel to put their trust in the true God – in Yahweh.
Are silver and gold – Made of silver and gold, and they must have, therefore, the properties of silver and gold. They can be of value only as silver and gold. They cannot do the work of mind; they cannot do the work of God. The psalmist was not disposed to depreciate the real value of these idols, or to throw contempt on them which they did not deserve. He was disposed to treat them fairly. They were silver and gold; they had an intrinsic value as such; they showed in the value of the material how much the pagan were disposed to honor their objects of worship; and they were not held up to contempt as shapeless blocks of wood or stone. The psalmist might have said that most of them were made of wood or stone, and were mere shapeless blocks; but it is always best to do justice to an adversary, and not to attempt to underrate what he values. The argument of an infidel on the subject of religion may be utterly worthless as an argument for infidelity, but it may evince ability, learning, subtilty, clearness of reasoning, and even candor; and it is best to admit this, if it is so, and to give to it all the credit which it deserves as a specimen of reasoning, or as stating a real difficulty which ought to be solved by somebody – to call it silver and gold if it is so, and not to characterize it as worthless, weak, stupid – the result of ignorance and folly. He has great advantage in an argument who owns the real force of what an opponent says; he gains nothing who charges it as the offspring of stupidity, ignorance, and folly – unless he can show that it is so.
The work of mens hands – Shaped and fashioned by peoples hands. They cannot, therefore, be superior to those who made them; they cannot answer the purpose of a God.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Psa 115:4-8
Their idols are silver and gold, the work of mens hands.
Babylonian idolatry
Babylon was a land in which life was overshadowed by a vast idolatry. What this idolatry was, we may see, in part, by a visit to the British Museum. There are to be seen at this hour figures and inscriptions which might well have been gazed on by the writers of this very psalm, and which show how the Baal worship which, in its different forms, prevailed from the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean, was the most striking feature of the life of the Imperial race that had conquered Palestine. To this hour, the ruins of what was the great Temple of Belus within the city, and of the Temple of Nimrod without the city, show how powerfully this idolatry must have addressed itself to the senses of the people. And the same conclusion is warranted by the anxious warnings of Isaiah in anticipation of the captivity, and by the language of the later psalmists who wrote in Babylon. Isaiah describes with a fine and indignant irony how in Babylon, too, the smith with the tongs, and the carpenter with his rule, would combine to make an idol according to the beauty of a man, and how worship would be paid to what was, in reality, only the stock of a tree. And the psalmist of the later epoch was, we can hardly doubt, inspired to write at the sight of the splendid images in the Babylonian temples, and notably, perhaps, by that of the golden image of Belus. Their idols are silver and gold, etc. (Psa 115:4-8). It was this idolatry which Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego resisted at the risk of their lives, and at which Daniel struck a deadly blow when, according to the Alexandrian account–till lately read in our churches, and undoubtedly embodying a germ of substantial history–he exposed on a great scale the fraud of the priest of Baal and destroyed his image. (Canon Liddon.)
Eyes have they, but they see not.—
The eye of the spirit
The rich and varied gifts, the pure exalted pleasures, which the eyes of the body are intended to minister to man, are marred by want of sympathetic observation even more than by want of knowledge. Two boys went out one summers day, each alone, to spend a holiday in the fields. I have forgotten every detail of the story, but whatever the story was, it is easy to imagine what it might have been. The one boy came back in discontent. He had seen nothing, done nothing. He was tired; he had wasted the holiday. The other came back full of delight. He had watched the cattle and the fishes and the birds. He had noted the flowers and the hedgerows and the corn. They had spoken to him with voices which–though he knew it not–his spirit heard. They had told him–though he felt it only, understood it not–they had told him of the marvels of their nature, of their fitness for their appointed place, of the ever fresh beauties which man could see in them, if he would but enable the eyes of his body with the spirit of thankfulness and love. You have this contrast, thus drawn, set before you every day in many ways. I suppose that no one here would wish to live a merely material–animal–life, a life of the body only; to spend his time in securing the largest amount of pleasure–harmless pleasure if you will–for the delight or solace of his bodily senses; to feel more and more sad, as the years run on past middle life, that one sense and another is become less keen, is capable of less pleasure; to watch the sands of life running out apace, with no sense of compensation, no quiet conviction that as one transient pleasure after another becomes less bright or passes away, the place of each is taken–is taken and more than filled–by consolations of no transient kind, by blessings that make their abiding home with him. We must, if we would avoid a growing discontent, we must live the inner–the Spiritual–life too. The eye of the spirit must be an eye that sees. The life of the spirit must be a real life. Not a life apart from that of the body, but a life spiritualizing and etherealizing the bodily life. To teach the eye of the body to see in the higher sense, to observe, to interpret, to enjoy, to minister to the intellectual capacity of man, and be in turn quickened and brightened by mans intellect, we educate the man; working in faith and hope; not discouraged by the many discouragements; sure that it cannot but be right that man should learn to know. How shall we treat the eye of the spirit? how shall we help it to see? how give it insight? I speak not now of what our holy religion may do; for the moment I am not referring to the realms of grace. That which the spirit of man most needs, for its full play and development, is just that which in this hurrying age is ever more and more difficult to obtain,–rest and quiet, time and place for contemplation. This is no idea specially of the Christian revelation; it is common to all ages and all peoples; it is the natural demand of the spirit of man. We have all of us probably seen and noted the highest oriental ideal of spiritual isolation from things and thoughts of the world,–a seated figure with inscrutable face, the eyes for ever cast down, gazing endlessly into the palm of the hand. This was one of the ideas connected with the prophet of old times. He sat apart in rapt contemplation; the things of the world and of the flesh shut out from his sight; his eyes fixed steadily on some unmoving thing; the spiritual element ever growing in relative importance, and at last overpowering the material and dominating the whole man. And then there welled up within him, from some spiritual source, some inspiration, the thoughts and the words that were to frame and to form his prophetic utterance; and he poured forth dark sayings, or declared, as one inspired, the will of God. But need I really go further than the experience of each one of you, to find evidence of the power of contemplation on the spirit, the need of it, if we would have a spiritual sense, a spiritual insight? You know of what extreme importance it is, if you have any serious matter in hand, to put yourself in the right frame of mind to consider it duly and make a wise resolve. How often it happens that you cannot shut out the disturbing presence of other things. You know that for this special purpose you ought to isolate yourself, to be clear of confusing voices, confusing thoughts. And what you have to make your resolve about is coming on so rapidly; a resolve will be forced upon you so soon; there is such a sense of rush and hurry; you cannot properly decide the matter without previous quiet thought and communing, and quiet thought you cannot get. You feel this in matters of business; you feel it in difficult moral questions; you feel it in many a decision, which circumstances force upon you, in your relations with those who are of your bone and of your flesh. You feel it whenever you think of yourself in your higher relations, as a spiritual existence, as having duties beyond the realms of sense, as being under some conscious obligation to be guided in your walk through life by aims which shall of themselves ennoble your endeavours, by principles which are of eternal truth and justice. (Bishop Browne.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 4. Their idols are silver, c.] They are metal, stone, and wood. They are generally made in the form of man, but can neither see, hear, smell, feel, walk, nor speak. How brutish to trust in such! And next to these, in stupidity and inanity, must they be who form them, with the expectation of deriving any good from them. So obviously vain was the whole system of idolatry, that the more serious heathens ridiculed it, and it was a butt for the jests of their freethinkers and buffoons. How keen are those words of Juvenal!
———————-Audis
Jupiter, haec? nec labra moves, cum mittere vocem.
Debueras, vel marmoreus vel aheneus? aut cur
In carbone tuo charta pia thura soluta
Ponimus, et sectum vituli jecur, albaque porci
Omenta? ut video, nullum discrimen habendum est.
Effigies inter vestras, statuamque Bathylli.
SAT. xiii., ver. 113.
“Dost thou hear, O Jupiter, these things? nor move thy lips when thou oughtest to speak out, whether thou art of marble or of bronze? Or, why do we put the sacred incense on thy altar from the opened paper, and the extracted liver of a calf, and the white caul of a hog? As far as I can discern there is no difference between thy statue and that of Bathyllus.”
This irony will appear the keener, when it is known that Bathyllus was a fiddler and player, whose image by the order of Polycrates, was erected in the temple of Juno at Samos. See Isa 41:1. c. Isa 46:7; Jer 10:4-5, c. and Ps 135:15; Ps 135:16.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Thus glorious and powerful is our God, O ye heathens, of whom you so boldly ask who and where he is; but as for your gods or idols, they have no power nor worth in them but what is taken from their materials. As their matter is wholly from the earth, so their form or figure they have from the art of man; and therefore they should rather, if it were possible, worship man, as their creator and lord, than be worshipped by him.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
4-7. (Compare Isa 40:18-20;Isa 44:9-20).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Their idols are silver and gold,…. The idols of the Gentiles; so the Septuagint, Vulgate Latin, Syriac, Arabic, and Ethiopic versions. The gods they serve and worship are not in the heavens; but the matter of which they are made is dug out of the earth: and this is the greatest excellency and value that there is in them; and such as are made of these are of the greatest worth, and yet only for the matter of them, otherwise useless and inanimate statues; such are the idols of the Papists, Re 9:20.
The work of men’s hands; the matter of them is gold and silver, which they owe to the earth as their original; the form of them they owe to men, and therefore can not be God, Ho 8:6. If it is idolatry to worship what God has made, the sun, moon, and stars, it must be gross idolatry, and great stupidity, to worship what man has made: if it is sinful to worship the creature besides the Creator, or more than him, it must be still more so to worship the creature of a creature.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
4 Their idols This contrast is introduced for the purpose of confirming the faith of the godly, by which they repose upon God alone; because, excepting him, all that the minds of men imagine of divinity is the invention of folly and delusion. To know the error and the madness of the world certainly contributes in no small degree to the confirmation of true godliness; while, on the other hand, a God is presented to us, whom we know assuredly to be the maker of heaven and earth, and whom we are to worship, not without reason or at random. The more effectually to silence the arrogance of the ungodly, who proudly presume to set at nought God and his chosen people, he contemptuously ridicules their false gods, first calling them idols, that is to say, things of nought, and, next, showing from their being formed of inanimate materials, that they are destitute of life and feeling. For can there be anything more absurd than to expect assistance from them, since neither the materials of which they are formed, nor the form which is given to them by the hand of men, possess the smallest portion of divinity so as to command respect for them? At the same time, the prophet tacitly indicates that the value of the material does not invest the idols with more excellence so that they deserve to be more highly esteemed. Hence the passage may be translated adversatively, thus, Though they are of gold and silver, yet they are not gods, because they are the work of men’s hands. Had it been his intention merely to depreciate the substance of which they were composed, he would rather have called them wood and stone, but at present he speaks only of gold and silver. In the meantime, the prophet reminds us that nothing is more unbecoming than for men to say that they can impart either essence, or form, or honor to a god, since they themselves are dependent upon another for that life which will soon disappear. From this it follows, that the heathen vainly boast of receiving help from gods of their own devising. Whence does idolatry take its origin but from the imaginations of men? Having abundance of materials supplied to their hand, they can make of their gold or silver, not only a goblet or some other kind of vessel, but also vessels for meaner purposes, but they prefer making a god. And what can be more absurd than to convert a lifeless mass into some new deity? Besides, the prophet satirically adds, that while the heathen fashion members for their idols, they cannot enable them to move or use them. It is on this account that the faithful experience their privilege to be the more valuable, in that the only true God is on their side, and because they are well assured that all the heathen vainly boast of the aid which they expect from their idols, which are nothing but shadows.
This is a doctrine, however, which ought to receive a greater latitude of meaning; for from it we learn, generally, that it is foolish to seek God under outward images, which have no resemblance or relation to his celestial glory. To this principle we must still adhere, otherwise it would be easy for the heathen to complain that they were unjustly condemned, because, though they make for themselves idols upon earth, they yet were persuaded that God is in heaven. They did not imagine that Jupiter was either composed of stone, or of gold, or of earth, but that he was merely represented under these similitudes. Whence originated this form of address common among the ancient Romans, “To make supplication before the gods,” but because they believed the images to be, as it were, the representations of the gods? (368) The Sicilians, says Cicero, have no gods before whom they can present their supplications. He would not have spoken in this barbarous style, had the notion not been prevalent, that the figures of the heavenly deities were represented to them in brass, or silver, or in marble; (369) and cherishing the notion, that in approaching these images the gods were nearer to them, the prophet justly exposes this ridiculous fancy, that they would enclose the Deity within corruptible representations, since nothing is more foreign to the nature of God than to dwell under stone, or a piece of marble, or wood, and stock of a tree, or brass, or silver. (370) For this reason, the prophet Habakkuk designates that gross mode of worshipping God, the school of falsehood. (Hab 2:18.) Moreover, the scornful manner in which he speaks of their gods deserves to be noticed, they have a mouth, but they do not speak; for why do we betake ourselves to God, but from the conviction that we are dependent upon him for life; that our safety is in him, and that the abundance of good, and the power to help us, are with him? As these images are senseless and motionless, what can be more absurd than to ask from them that of which they themselves are destitute?
(368) “ Car que vouloit dire ceste facon de parler dont usoyent les anciens Romains, faire oraison deuant les dieux sinon qu’ils estimoyent que les idoles estoyent comme les representations des dieux ?” — Fr.
(369) But though these images might, at first, be intended merely to bring the real Deity before the senses, and thus to impress the mind the more deeply with sentiments of awe and devotion, yet in process of time they began to be considered, especially by the ignorant multitude, as being really gods.
(370) The heathen not only considered their idols or images as representing their gods, but believed that, when consecrated by their priests, they were thereby animated by the gods whom they represented, and hence were worshipped as such. “Augustine ( De Civitate Dei , B. 8, c. 23) tells us of the theology of the heathen, received from Trismegistus, that statues were the bodies of their gods, which, by some magical ceremonies, or θεουργίαι, were forced to join themselves as souls, and so animate and enliven those dead organs, to assume and inhabit them. And so Proclus ( De Sacrif et Mag .) mentions it as the common opinion of the Gentiles, that the ‘gods were, by their favor and help, present in their images;’ and, therefore, the Tyrians, fearing that Apollo would forsake them, bound his image with golden chains, supposing then the god could not depart from them. The like did the Athenians imagine when they clipped the wings of the image of Victory; and the Sicilians, in Cicero, ( De Divin .) who complain that they had no gods in their island, because Verres, Praetor in Sicily, had taken away all their statues. And so we know Laban, when he had lost his Teraphim, tells Jacob, (Gen 31:30,) ‘that he had stolen his gods;’ and so of the golden calf, after the feasts of consecration, proclamation is made before it, ‘These be thy gods, O Israel!’ But this of the animation and inspiriting of images, by their rites of consecration, being but a deception and fiction of their priests, the Psalmist here discovers it, and assures all men that they are as inanimate and senseless after the consecration as before; base silver and gold, with images of mouths and ears, etc., but without any power to use any of them, and, consequently, most unable to hear or help their votaries.” — Hammond
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(4-8) This passage cannot compare with the magnificent irony of Isa. 44:9-20, but there is still a noticeable vein of sarcasm running through it, visible even more in the original than in the English. (Comp. Psa. 135:15-18.)
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
4. Their idols are silver and gold The contrast still appears between “our God” and “their idols.” The idols of the heathen are pretended images or representations of deities, who, upon the consecration of the images, are supposed to take up their dwelling in them, and to act through them. The image itself was considered as a help to the mind, through the senses, to ascend to the divinities. But the vulgar mind has always omitted this distinction, and paid sacred honours to the image. The Romish Church has borrowed its system of image worship from the heathen, defending it upon the same principle, but has succeeded no better than they in rescuing the mind from depraved and depraving conceptions of God and his worship.
The description of idols in Psa 115:4-8 is given in the sarcastic style of Isa 44:9-20, and developed from the fundamental passage, (Deu 4:28,) later on copied by the returned exiles.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Psa 115:4 Their idols [are] silver and gold, the work of men’s hands.
Ver. 4. Their idols are silver and gold ] Take them at the best, they are no better; and what is silver and gold but the guts and garbage of the earth? But some of them might say, as Priapus in Horace,
Olim truncus eram ficulnus, inutile lignum.
Herodotus telleth us, that Amasis had a large laver of gold, wherein both he and his guests used to wash their feet. This vessel he brake and made a god of it; which the Egyptians devoutly worshipped. And the like idolomany is at this day found among Papists; what distinction soever the world would fain make between an idol and an image, which indeed (as they use them) are all one.
The work of men’s hands] And therefore they must needs be goodly gods, when made by bunglers especially, as was the cross of Cockram; which, if it were not good enough to make a god, would make an excellent devil, as the mayor of Doncaster merrily told the complainants (Acts and Mon. fol. 1340).
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
silver and gold. Put by Figure of speech Metonymy (of Cause), App-6, for what is made from them. Compare Psa 135:15-19.
work. Some codices, with Septuagint and Vulgate, read plural, “works”.
men’s. Hebrew. ‘adam. App-14.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Psa 115:4-8
Psa 115:4-8
THE WAY IT IS WITH HEATHEN IDOLS
“Their idols are silver and gold,
The work of men’s hands.
They have mouths, but they speak not;
Eyes they have, but they see not;
They have ears, but they hear not;
Noses have they, but they smell not;
They have hands, but they handle not;
Feet have they, but they walk not;
Neither speak they through their throat.
They that made them shall be like unto them;
Yea, every one that trusteth in them.”
This is one of the classic passages in the Old Testament regarding idols. It ranks along with passages in Isaiah 40; Isaiah 42; and Isaiah 44 and is repeated verbatim in Psa 135:15-18.
We are surprised that Addis expresses the old heathen apology for idols, stating that, “The heathen did not, as the psalmist assumes, identify the idol and god. Among the most intellectual pagans, that distinction was probably made. Indeed, Israel attempted to use it when they made the golden calf, affirming that it was the same as the God, “who brought them up out of Egypt (Exo 32:4; Exo 32:11).” God allowed no such apology for an idol, and men should not allow it today.
As Delitzsch said, the psalmist here probably knew from his own experience, “How little was the distinction made by the heathen worshipper between the symbol and the thing symbolized.
The widespread lack of information concerning the entire subject of idols and the consecration of sacred images, which to all intents and purposes are indeed no different from ancient pagan idols, is pitiful indeed.
The essential evil in all idols (and images) is that any symbolism ascribed to them is a falsehood. By its very nature, any religious image is false, being a lying presentation of what is allegedly represented. How can that which is material represent that which is spiritual? How can that which is helpless represent omnipotence? How can that which decays represent life eternal? How can that which is not intelligent represent omniscience? How can that which is dumb, blind, unfeeling, deaf and dead represent any of the vital realities of God and his holy religion?
“There is abundant proof that the heathen did indeed trust their idols, as revealed by Herodotus, 5:80 and VIII: 64,83. Thus, the “assumption of the psalmist here” that the heathen were actually worshipping idols, as contrasted with what they were supposed to represent, is altogether true.
“They that make them shall be like unto them … yea, every one that trusteth in them.” The principle that men become like the object of their adoration holds good if that object is a dead idol. This imprecation applies not only to the craftsmen who made the idols, but to those who employed them, “And is extended in the climax, to all idolaters, every one that trusteth in them.
Regarding all idols and sacred images, even those in nominal Christian churches, there are several divine prohibitions. It is a sin: (1) to make them; (2) serve them; (3) or even to bow down in front of them; and (4) of course, a sin to worship them. It is a sin to bow the head, genuflect, bend the knee or make obeisance to any sacred image, even if the person doing so mistakenly thinks he is worshipping what the image is alleged to symbolize. The sin is making any such gesture “in front of a man-made image.”
E.M. Zerr:
Psa 115:4-8. It would have weakened the argument not to include all of these verses in one paragraph. It should be noted that 7 of the most important members of the human body are named in the description of the idols. The heathen people had drifted into gross ignorance of the true God, yet they had retained the impression that He was a being with body and parts similar in form to those of man. The fact that the writer is the one who has named them here proves that this idea is correct. We observe that David makes no criticism of the items, except that the man-made gods which have them cannot make any use of them. They that make them are like unto them. This statement involves more thought than at first might be realized. No person can make anything that could have any more ability than the maker of it. So the fundamental thought is, since man cannot perform the functions named in any supernatural degree, neither can he make a god that can.
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
Their idols: They are metal, stone, and wood; and though generally made in the form of man, they can neither see, hear, smell, feel, walk, nor speak! Even the wiser heathen made them the objects of their jests. Psa 97:7, Psa 135:15-17, Deu 4:28, Isa 40:19, Isa 40:20, Isa 42:17, Isa 46:1, Isa 46:2, Isa 46:6, Isa 46:7, Jer 10:3-5, Hos 8:6, Hab 2:18-20, Act 19:26, Act 19:35, 1Co 10:19, 1Co 10:20
Reciprocal: Exo 20:4 – General Lev 26:1 – Ye shall Jdg 6:31 – if he be Jdg 17:3 – a graven image 1Sa 5:5 – neither 1Sa 12:21 – cannot profit 1Ki 14:9 – thou hast gone 1Ki 16:7 – with the work 1Ki 18:26 – no voice 2Ki 17:29 – made gods 2Ki 19:18 – for they were 2Ki 22:17 – the works 1Ch 16:26 – all the gods 2Ch 25:15 – which could Psa 106:28 – of the dead Isa 2:8 – worship Isa 37:19 – no gods Isa 41:29 – they are all Jer 2:11 – no gods Jer 2:13 – broken cisterns Jer 2:27 – to a stock Jer 10:4 – deck Jer 10:9 – are all Jer 10:14 – and Jer 16:20 – General Dan 3:1 – made Dan 5:4 – of gold Dan 5:23 – which Hos 13:2 – have made Act 17:29 – we ought 1Co 8:4 – we know Gal 4:8 – ye did Eph 4:18 – the understanding 1Th 3:12 – the Lord Rev 9:20 – and idols
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Psa 115:4-7. Their idols The objects of their idolatrous worship, are silver and gold That is, images made of silver and gold, dug out of the earth. Their gods are so far from being the makers of all things, or of any thing, that they themselves are the work of those that adore them. As the matter of them is wholly from the earth, so they have their form and figure from the art of man; and therefore they ought rather, if it were possible, to worship man, as their Creator and Lord, than be worshipped by him. They have mouths, &c. The painter, the carver, the statuary performed their parts: they gave them the figure and appearance of mouths and eyes, ears and noses, hands and feet. But they could not put life into them, nor therefore any sense. They speak not in answer to those that consult them. They see not the prostrations of their worshippers before them, much less their distresses or wants. They hear not their prayers, how loud soever; they smell not their incense, however strong or sweet; they handle not the gifts presented to them, much less have they any gifts to bestow on their worshippers, or are able to stretch out their hands to the needy. They walk not; nor can they stir a step for the relief of those that apply to them for help. Nay, they do not so much as breathe through their throat, nor have they the least sign or symptom of life or motion: but are things as perfectly dead after the priest has pretended to consecrate them, and call a deity into them, as they were before. Here then we have a most striking and beautiful contrast between the God of Israel and the heathen idols. He made every thing, they are themselves made by men; he is in heaven, they are upon earth; he doth whatsoever he pleaseth, they can do nothing; he seeth the distresses, heareth and answereth the prayers, accepteth the offerings, cometh to the assistance, and effecteth the salvation of his servants; they are blind, deaf, and dumb, senseless, motionless, and impotent. And observe well, reader, equally slow to hear, equally impotent to save, in time of greatest need, will every worldly idol prove, on which men have set their affections, and to which they, in effect, say, Thou art my God. Horne.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
115:4 Their idols [are] {d} silver and gold, the work of men’s hands.
(d) Seeing that neither the matter nor the form can commend their idols it follows that there is no reason that they should be esteemed.