Anonymous (Septuagint) · a new plain-English translation from the original language
1| A man setting out on a voyage once more, about to cross the wild waves, calls out to a piece of wood more fragile than the ship that carries him.
2| For that ship was the invention of a desire for profit, and skilled wisdom built it;
3| but it is your providence, Father, that steers it through, since you gave a road even in the sea and a safe path even among the waves,
4| showing that you can save from anything, so that even without skill a man may go aboard.
5| You do not want the works of your wisdom to be idle; that is why men entrust their lives even to the smallest piece of wood, and passing through the surge on a raft they come safely through.
6| And indeed, at the beginning too, when the arrogant giants were perishing, the hope of the world fled to a raft and, steered by your hand, left behind for the age a seed for a new generation.
7| For blessed is the wood through which righteousness comes about;
8| but the idol made by hands is accursed, and so is the one who made it — he because he did the work, and it because, though perishable, it was called a god.
9| For equally hateful to God are the ungodly man and his ungodliness;
10| for the deed will be punished together with the one who did it.
11| Therefore there will be a reckoning even against the idols of the nations, because, though part of God's creation, they became an abomination, and a stumbling block to men's souls, and a snare for the feet of the foolish.
12| For dreaming up idols was where sexual immorality began, and devising them brought about life's ruin.
13| For they did not exist from the beginning, nor will they exist forever;
14| they entered the world through human vanity, and for that reason a swift end has been devised for them.
15| For a father, worn down by untimely grief, made an image of the child so quickly taken from him, and now honored as a god the one who was then a dead man, and handed down to his household mysteries and rites;
16| then in time the ungodly custom, grown strong, was kept as law, and by the commands of tyrants carved images were worshiped;
17| and men, unable to honor these rulers face to face because they lived far away, fashioned a likeness from afar and made a visible image of the king they honored, so that by their zeal they might flatter the absent one as though present.
18| And to spur worship still further, even among those who did not know the ruler, the ambition of the craftsman drove it on.
19| For he, wishing perhaps to please the one in power, labored by his art to force the likeness toward greater beauty;
20| and the crowd, drawn in by the charm of the workmanship, now regarded as an object of reverence the man who shortly before had merely been honored.
21| And this became a trap for human life, that men enslaved either to calamity or to tyranny bestowed the name that belongs to none but God upon stones and pieces of wood.
22| Then it was not enough to go astray in the knowledge of God, but living in the great war of ignorance they even call such great evils by the name of peace.
23| For whether performing rites that kill children, or secret mysteries, or frenzied revels with strange customs,
24| they no longer keep either their lives or their marriages pure, but one destroys another by ambush, or wounds him by adultery.
25| And everywhere alike there is blood and murder, theft and deceit, corruption, faithlessness, turmoil, perjury, harassment of good people,
26| forgetfulness of favors received, defilement of souls, exchange of one's birth-role, disorder in marriages, adultery and debauchery.
27| For revering idols that bear no name is where every wrong starts, why it happens, and where it finally leads;
28| for either they rejoice and go mad, or they prophesy falsehoods, or they live unjustly, or they swear falsely without a second thought;
29| for trusting in lifeless idols, when they have sworn wickedly they do not expect to be harmed for it.
30| But both things will pursue them in justice: that they thought wrongly about God by giving heed to idols, and that they swore falsely in deceit, showing contempt for holiness.
31| For it is not the power of the ones sworn by, but the penalty owed by sinners, that always follows after the transgression of the unjust.