📖 This chapter exists in 2 other originals — side by side (Vulgate, Ge'ez Bible)
ℹ️ This corpus has no verse-level morphological tagging. Lemmas come mainly from word-level tagging of other books in the same language (not from this verse), falling back to dictionary form-matching for the rest. Rare homographs can still be misread; verify against the original and a specialist lexicon where precision matters.
ℹ️ The Chinese and English alongside are this site's own translation, made directly from the original text on this page (not the CUV or the WEB, which follow the Masoretic Text and a different textual tradition).
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And it is your will that the works of your wisdom should be not idle; Therefore also do men intrust their lives to a little piece of wood,, And passing through the surge on a raft are brought safe to land.
For in the old time also, when proud giants were perishing, The hope of the world, taking refuge on a raft, Left to the race of men a seed of generations to come, Your hand guiding the helm.
Therefore also among the idols of the nations will there be a visitation, Because, though formed of things which God created, they were made an abomination, And stumbling blocks to the souls of men, And a snare to the feet of the foolish.
For a father worn with untimely grief, Making an image of the child quickly taken away, Now honored him as a god which was then a dead man, And delivered to those that were under him mysteries and solemn rites.
Afterward the ungodly custom, in process of time grown strong, was kept as a law, And by the commandments of princes the graven images received worship.
And when men could not honor them in presence because they lived far off, Imagining the likeness from afar, They made a visible image of the king whom they honored, That by their zeal they might flatter the absent as if present.
And the multitude, allured by reason of the grace of his handywork, Now accounted as an object of devotion him that a little before was honored as a man.
And this became a hidden danger to life, Because men, in bondage either to calamity or to tyranny, Invested stones and stocks with the incommunicable Name.
Afterward it was not enough for them to go astray as touching the knowledge of God; But also, while they live in sore conflict through ignorance of him. That multitude of evils they call peace.
But for both sins will the just doom pursue them, Because they had evil thoughts of God by giving heed to idols, And swore unrighteously in deceit through contempt for holiness.
For it is not the power of them by whom men swear, But it is that Justice which has regard to those who sin, That visiteth always the transgression of the unrighteous.