Wisdom of Solomon

But you, our God, are kind and true, patient, and ruling all things in mercy.

For even if we sin we are yours, since we know your power; but we will not sin, because we know that you acknowledge us as yours.

For to know you is complete righteousness, and to know your power is the root of immortality.

For neither has the evil intent of human art misled us, nor the fruitless toil of painters, a figure stained with varied colors,

whose appearance arouses yearning in fools, so that they desire the lifeless form of a dead image.

Lovers of evil things and those who put their hope in them are liable to judgment, as are those who make them and those who love them and those who worship them.

A potter kneads the soft earth and laboriously molds each vessel for our service, fashioning out of the same clay both the vessels that serve clean uses and those for contrary uses, making all in like manner; but what shall be the use of each vessel of either class the potter decides.

With misspent toil, these people form a futile god from the same clay—these people who a little before were made from the earth and after a little go to the earth from which all were taken, when the time comes to return the souls that were borrowed.

But they are not concerned that they are destined to die or that their life is brief, but they compete with one another over gold and silver and surpass one another in training for copper, and they count it a splendid thing to make counterfeit objects.

Their heart is ashes, their hope is cheaper than dirt, and their lives are of less worth than clay,

because they failed to know the one who formed them and inspired them with active souls and breathed a living spirit into them.

But they considered our existence an idle game and life a festival held for profit, for they say one must get money however one can, even by base means.

For these people, more than all others, know that they sin when they make from earthy material fragile vessels and carved images.

But most foolish, and more miserable than an infant, are all the enemies who oppressed your people.

For they thought that all their heathen idols were gods, though these have neither the use of their eyes to see with, nor nostrils with which to draw breath, nor ears with which to hear, nor fingers to feel with, and their feet are useless to walk with.

For a human being made them, and one whose spirit is borrowed formed them; for no human being can form a god that is like himself.

He is mortal, and what he makes with lawless hands is dead, for he is better than the objects he worships, since he has life, but they never have.

They even worship the most hateful animals, which are worse than all others when judged by their lack of intelligence;

and even as animals they are not so beautiful in appearance that one would desire them, but they have escaped both the praise of God and his blessing.