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 marmoureus 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. xli. 1. &c.; xlvi. 7; Jeremiah x. 4, 5, &c.; and Psa. cxxxv. 15, 16.

Matthew Henry Commentary

Original Hebrew