Wisdom 13:1-15:17
New American Bible (Revised Edition)
Chapter 13
Digression on False Worship
A. Nature Worship[a]
1 Foolish by nature were all who were in ignorance of God,
and who from the good things seen did not succeed in knowing the one who is,[b]
and from studying the works did not discern the artisan;(A)
2 Instead either fire, or wind, or the swift air,
or the circuit of the stars, or the mighty water,
or the luminaries of heaven, the governors[c] of the world, they considered gods.(B)
3 Now if out of joy in their beauty they thought them gods,
let them know how far more excellent is the Lord than these;
for the original source of beauty fashioned them.(C)
4 Or if they were struck by their might and energy,
let them realize from these things how much more powerful is the one who made them.(D)
5 For from the greatness and the beauty of created things
their original author, by analogy, is seen.
6 But yet, for these the blame is less;[d]
For they have gone astray perhaps,
though they seek God and wish to find him.
7 For they search busily among his works,
but are distracted by what they see, because the things seen are fair.
8 But again, not even these are pardonable.
9 For if they so far succeeded in knowledge
that they could speculate about the world,
how did they not more quickly find its Lord?
B. Idolatry[e]
10 But wretched are they, and in dead things are their hopes,
who termed gods things made by human hands:
Gold and silver, the product of art, and images of beasts,
or useless stone, the work of an ancient hand.(E)
The Carpenter and Wooden Idols
11 A carpenter may cut down a suitable tree(F)
and skillfully scrape off all its bark,
And deftly plying his art
produce something fit for daily use,(G)
12 And use the scraps from his handiwork
in preparing his food, and have his fill;
13 Then the good-for-nothing refuse from these remnants,
crooked wood grown full of knots,
he takes and carves to occupy his spare time.(H)
This wood he models with mindless skill,
and patterns it on the image of a human being
14 or makes it resemble some worthless beast.
When he has daubed it with red and crimsoned its surface with red stain,
and daubed over every blemish in it,(I)
15 He makes a fitting shrine for it
and puts it on the wall, fastening it with a nail.(J)
16 Thus he provides for it lest it fall down,
knowing that it cannot help itself;
for, truly, it is an image and needs help.(K)
17 But when he prays about his goods or marriage or children,(L)
he is not ashamed to address the thing without a soul.
For vigor he invokes the powerless;
18 for life he entreats the dead;
For aid he beseeches the wholly incompetent;
for travel, something that cannot even walk;
19 For profit in business and success with his hands
he asks power of a thing with hands utterly powerless.
Chapter 14
1 Again, one preparing for a voyage and about to traverse the wild waves
cries out to wood more unsound than the boat that bears him.(M)
2 For the urge for profits devised this latter,
and Wisdom the artisan produced it.
3 [f]But your providence, O Father! guides it,
for you have furnished even in the sea a road,
and through the waves a steady path,(N)
4 Showing that you can save from any danger,
so that even one without skill may embark.(O)
5 But you will that the products of your Wisdom be not idle;
therefore people trust their lives even to most frail wood,
and were safe crossing the waves on a raft.(P)
6 For of old, when the proud giants were being destroyed,
the hope of the universe, who took refuge on a raft,[g]
left to the world a future for the human family, under the guidance of your hand.
7 For blest is the wood through which righteousness comes about;
8 but the handmade idol is accursed, and its maker as well:
he for having produced it, and the corruptible thing, because it was termed a god.(Q)
9 Equally odious to God are the evildoer and the evil deed;
10 and the thing made will be punished with its maker.
11 Therefore upon even the idols of the nations shall a judgment come,
since they became abominable among God’s works,
Snares for human souls
and a trap for the feet of the senseless.(R)
The Origin and Evils of Idolatry
12 For the source of wantonness is the devising of idols;
and their invention, a corruption of life.(S)
13 For in the beginning they were not,
nor can they ever continue;(T)
14 for from human emptiness they came into the world,
and therefore a sudden end is devised for them.
15 [h]For a father, afflicted with untimely mourning,
made an image of the child so quickly taken from him,
And now honored as a god what once was dead
and handed down to his household mysteries and sacrifices.
16 Then, in the course of time, the impious practice gained strength and was observed as law,
and graven things were worshiped by royal decrees.(U)
17 People who lived so far away that they could not honor him in his presence
copied the appearance of the distant king
And made a public image of him they wished to honor,
out of zeal to flatter the absent one as though present.
18 And to promote this observance among those to whom it was strange,
the artisan’s ambition provided a stimulus.
19 For he, perhaps in his determination to please the ruler,
labored over the likeness[i] to the best of his skill;(V)
20 And the masses, drawn by the charm of the workmanship,
soon took as an object of worship the one who shortly before was honored as a human being.(W)
21 And this became a snare for the world,
that people enslaved to either grief or tyranny
conferred the incommunicable Name on stones and wood.
22 Then it was not enough for them to err in their knowledge of God;(X)
but even though they live in a great war resulting from ignorance,
they call such evils peace.(Y)
23 For while they practice either child sacrifices or occult mysteries,
or frenzied carousing in exotic rites,(Z)
24 They no longer respect either lives or purity of marriage;
but they either waylay and kill each other, or aggrieve each other by adultery.
25 And all is confusion—blood and murder, theft and guile,(AA)
corruption, faithlessness, turmoil, perjury,
26 Disturbance of good people, neglect of gratitude,
besmirching of souls, unnatural lust,
disorder in marriage, adultery and shamelessness.
27 For the worship of infamous idols
is the reason and source and extreme of all evil.(AB)
28 For they either go mad with enjoyment, or prophesy lies,
or live lawlessly or lightly perjure themselves.(AC)
29 For as their trust is in lifeless idols,
they expect no harm when they have sworn falsely.
30 But on both counts justice shall overtake them:
because they thought perversely of God by devoting themselves to idols,(AD)
and because they deliberately swore false oaths, despising piety.[j]
31 For it is not the might of those by whom they swear,
but the just retribution of sinners,
that ever follows upon the transgression of the wicked.[k]
Chapter 15
1 [l]But you, our God, are good and true,
slow to anger, and governing all with mercy.(AE)
2 For even if we sin, we are yours, and know your might;
but we will not sin, knowing that we belong to you.(AF)
3 For to know you well is complete righteousness,
and to know your might is the root of immortality.(AG)
4 For the evil creation of human fancy did not deceive us,
nor the fruitless labor of painters,(AH)
A form smeared with varied colors,
5 the sight of which arouses yearning in a fool,
till he longs for the inanimate form of a dead image.
6 Lovers of evil things, and worthy of such hopes
are they who make them and long for them and worship them.(AI)
The Potter’s Clay Idols
7 For the potter, laboriously working the soft earth,
molds for our service each single article:
He fashions out of the same clay
both the vessels that serve for clean purposes
and their opposites, all alike;
As to what shall be the use of each vessel of either class
the worker in clay is the judge.(AJ)
8 [m]With misspent toil he molds a meaningless god from the selfsame clay,
though he himself shortly before was made from the earth,
And is soon to go whence he was taken,
when the life that was lent him is demanded back.(AK)
9 But his concern is not that he is to die
nor that his span of life is brief;
Rather, he vies with goldsmiths and silversmiths
and emulates molders of bronze,
and takes pride in fashioning counterfeits.(AL)
10 Ashes his heart is![n] more worthless than earth is his hope,(AM)
more ignoble than clay his life;
11 Because he knew not the one who fashioned him,
and breathed into him a quickening soul,
and infused a vital spirit.(AN)
12 Instead, he esteemed our life a mere game,
and our span of life a holiday for gain;
“For one must,” says he, “make a profit in every way, be it even from evil.”(AO)
13 For more than anyone else he knows that he is sinning,
when out of earthen stuff he creates fragile vessels and idols alike.
14 But most stupid of all and worse than senseless in mind,
are the enemies of your people who enslaved them.(AP)
15 For they esteemed all the idols of the nations as gods,
which cannot use their eyes to see,
nor nostrils to breathe the air,
Nor ears to hear,
nor fingers on their hands for feeling;
even their feet are useless to walk with.(AQ)
16 For it was a mere human being who made them;(AR)
one living on borrowed breath who fashioned them.
For no one is able to fashion a god like himself;
17 he is mortal, and what he makes with lawless hands is dead.
For he is better than the things he worships;
he at least lives, but never his idols.
Footnotes
- 13:1–9 The author holds a relatively benign view of the efforts of the philosophers to come to know God from various natural phenomena. This is not a question of proving the existence of God in scholastic style. The author thinks that the beauty and might of the world should have pointed by analogy (v. 5) to the Maker. Instead, those “in ignorance of God” remained fixed on the elements (v. 2, three named, along with the stars). His Greek counterparts are not totally blameless; they should have gone further and acknowledged the creator of nature’s wonders (vv. 4–5). Cf. Rom 1:18–23; Acts 17:27–28.
- 13:1 One who is: this follows the Greek translation of the sacred name for God in Hebrew; cf. Ex 3:14.
- 13:2 Governors: the sun and moon (cf. Gn 1:16).
- 13:6 The blame is less: the greater blame is incurred by those mentioned in v. 10; 15:14–16.
- 13:10–19 The second digression is an example of the polemic against idolatry (cf. Is 44:9–20; Jer 10:3–9; Ps 135:15–18). Whether the idols be of wood or clay, they were made by human beings and have become the source of evil.
- 14:3–6 The wooden ship mentioned in vv. 1–2 prompts a short meditation on the providence of God, who in fact has watched over boats in their dangerous courses. The wood as described in v. 7 became a favorite patristic type for the wood of the cross.
- 14:6 Noah.
- 14:15–21 The author develops two examples of idolatry: cult of the dead, and cult of the king.
- 14:19 Likeness: he made this more flattering than the reality.
- 14:30 Piety: the sanctity of oaths.
- 14:31 Perjury is a form of deceit which calls for punishment even though it be practiced in the name of a lifeless idol.
- 15:1–3 As often before (11:26; 12:2; 14:3–6), the author addresses God directly, so that chaps. 11–19 can be conceived as a more or less continuous prayer (cf. 11:7 and 19:22). This is the living God who is in stark contrast to the deadness of the idols that have been discussed. The merciful God (cf. Ex 34:6) is the source of immortality (1:15) for the community.
- 15:8–9 The author matches the irony of his words about the carpenter in 13:15–19 with this description of the potter’s vain work.
- 15:10 Ashes his heart is!: the words of this cry are taken from Is 44:20 (the Septuagint).
Scripture texts, prefaces, introductions, footnotes and cross references used in this work are taken from the New American Bible, revised edition © 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc., Washington, DC All Rights Reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.