Wisdom of Solomon 15

1But you, our God, are kind and true, patient, and governing all things with mercy.

2For even if we sin, we are yours, knowing your power; but we will not sin, knowing that we have been counted as yours.

3For to know you is complete righteousness, and to know your power is the root of immortality.

4For neither did the evil-crafted invention of men lead us astray, nor the fruitless labor of a painter of shadows—an image stained with varied colors;

5The sight of them comes to fools as a reproach, and they long for the form of a lifeless image.

6Lovers of evil are worthy of such hopes, both those who make them and those who desire them and those who worship them.

7For a potter, kneading soft earth with toil, molds each vessel for our service; yet from the same clay he formed both the vessels that are servants to clean uses and those for the contrary, all alike. But which is the use of each of them, the potter is the judge.

8And with wicked toil he molds a futile god from the same clay—he who a little before had come from the earth, and after a short time goes back to the earth from which he was taken, when the debt of his soul is demanded.

9Yet his concern is not that he is about to grow weary, nor that his life is short; rather, he competes with goldsmiths and silversmiths, imitates bronze-workers, and considers it a glory that he molds counterfeit things.

10His heart is ashes, and his hope is more worthless than earth, and his life more dishonored than clay,

11because he did not know the one who formed him, and the one who breathed into him an active soul and breathed into him a life-giving spirit.

12But he considered our life to be a game, and our way of life a profitable festival; for, he says, one must get resources from wherever one can, even from evil.

13For this man knows better than all others that he is sinning, making fragile vessels and carved images out of earthy material.

14But all of them are most foolish and more miserable than an infant's soul—these enemies of your people who oppressed it.

15For they even considered all the idols of the nations to be gods—things that have neither the use of eyes for seeing, nor noses for drawing in air, nor ears to hear, nor fingers of hands for feeling, and their feet are useless for walking.

16For a man made them, and one who had borrowed the spirit formed them; for no man has the strength to fashion a god like himself.

17Yet being mortal, he makes a dead thing with lawless hands; for he is better than the things he worships, since he himself once lived, but those never did.

18Even the most hateful animals they revere; for, compared in foolishness with the others, they are worse.

19nor is it so beautiful in the sight of living creatures as to be desired; but it has escaped both the praise of God and his blessing.