Isaiah 44:9-20
New Catholic Bible
9 All those who make idols amount to nothing, and the images in which they take such pride profit no one. Their witnesses are blind and ignorant, and therefore they become objects of scorn. 10 Who would waste his time in fashioning a god or casting an image that will serve no purpose? 11 All who believe in their power will be put to shame, as will the craftsmen who fashioned them. Let them all assemble and approach me with terror and with shame.
12 The blacksmith fashions an ax over the coals, shaping it with hammers and forging it with his strong arm. Then he becomes hungry and his strength fails, and he becomes exhausted because he has not consumed any water.
13 The woodworker measures with a line and marks out an outline with a stylus. He shapes it with a plane and marks it with a compass. Then he carves it into the shape of a man, comely in appearance and dignity, to be placed in a shrine.
14 He also cuts down cedars or chooses a cypress or an oak that he has allowed to grow strong among the other trees of the forest, and a pine tree that he had planted and the rain has nourished. 15 When such trees are suitable to burn, he can use some of them to keep warm or to bake bread, but with others he fashions a god and worships it, shaping it into an idol and bowing down before it.
16 Half of the trees he uses to burn in the fire to roast meat which he eats and is satisfied, while at the same time he warms himself and says, “Ah, how warm I am from the heat of the fire.” 17 With the remainder he fashions a god, an idol before which he bows down and offers worship. He prays to it and says, “Save me, for you are my god.”
18 Such idols possess neither knowledge nor understanding, for their eyes are shut so that they cannot see, and their minds are incapable of reasoning. 19 Yet such a workman does not have the wisdom or the discernment to reflect, “Half of the wood I have burned in the fire, and I also used its embers to bake bread and to roast meat which I ate. Does it make sense to fashion an abomination with the remainder? Am I right to worship a block of wood?” 20 He feeds on ashes. His deluded mind has led him astray, and he cannot save himself. He will not admit to himself, “What I have in my hand is a fraud.”
