Isaiah 40:19
17 All the nations are as nothing before Him; He regards them as nothingness and emptiness.
18 To whom will you liken God? To what image will you compare Him?
To an idol that a craftsman casts and a metalworker overlays with gold and fits with silver chains?
20 To one bereft of an offering who chooses wood that will not rot, who seeks a skilled craftsman to set up an idol that will not topple?
21 Do you not know? Have you not heard? Has it not been declared to you from the beginning? Have you not understood since the foundation of the earth?
Do read the surrounding verses too, because the context often says more than a single verse.
Compare
- BSB
- To an idol that a craftsman casts and a metalworker overlays with gold and fits with silver chains?
- KJV
- The workman melteth a graven image, and the goldsmith spreadeth it over with gold, and casteth silver chains.
- WEB
- A workman has cast an image, and the goldsmith overlays it with gold, and casts silver chains for it.
- ASV
- The image, a workman hath cast [it], and the goldsmith overlayeth it with gold, and casteth [for it] silver chains.
- DARBY
- The workman casteth a graven image, and the goldsmith spreadeth it over with gold, and casteth silver chains [for it].
- BLB
- To an idol a craftsman casts, and a metalworker overlays it with gold and fits with chains of silver?
- ÅB
- Gudebildet er støpt av en mester, og en gullsmed klær det med gull, og han støper sølvkjeder til det.
- OTB
- Når det gjelder et idol, støper en håndverker det, og en gullsmed overtrekker det med gull og lager sølvkjeder for det.
- B1930
- Gudebilledet er støpt av en mester, og en gullsmed klær det med gull, og han støper sølvkjeder til det.
Study notes (Tyndale)
Original text and word study
Cross references
Jeremiah 10:9
Hammered silver is brought from Tarshish, and gold from Uphaz— the work of a craftsman from the hands of a goldsmith. Their clothes are blue and purple, all fashioned by skilled workers.
Read in contextIsaiah 46:6–7
They pour out their bags of gold and weigh out silver on scales; they hire a goldsmith to fashion it into a god, so they can bow down and worship.
Read in contextExodus 32:2–4
So Aaron told them, “Take off the gold earrings that are on your wives and sons and daughters, and bring them to me.”
Read in contextHabakkuk 2:18–19
What use is an idol, that a craftsman should carve it— or an image, a teacher of lies? For its maker trusts in his own creation; he makes idols that cannot speak.
Read in contextPsalms 115:4–8
Their idols are silver and gold, made by the hands of men.
Read in contextJudges 17:4
So he returned the silver to his mother, and she took two hundred shekels of silver and gave them to a silversmith, who made them into a graven image and a molten idol. And they were placed in the house of Micah.
Read in contextJeremiah 10:3–5
For the customs of the peoples are worthless; they cut down a tree from the forest; it is shaped with a chisel by the hands of a craftsman.
Read in contextIsaiah 44:10–12
Who fashions a god or casts an idol which profits him nothing?
Read in context