Whereupon the king took counsel, and made two calves of gold; and he said to them, It is too much for you to go up to Yerushalayim: see your gods, Yisra'el, which brought you up out of the land of Egypt.
Assemble yourselves and come; draw near together, you who have escaped from the nations: they have no knowledge who carry the wood of their engraved image, and pray to a god that can't save.
They are like a palm tree, of turned work, and don't speak: they must be carried, because they can't go. Don't be afraid of them; for they can't do evil, neither is it in them to do good.*
LORD, my strength, and my stronghold, and my refuge in the day of affliction, to you shall the nations come from the ends of the earth, and shall say, Our fathers have inherited nothing but lies, [even] vanity and things in which there is no profit.
Nevukhadnetzar 1 the king made an image of gold, whose height was sixty cubits, and the breadth of it six cubits: he set it up in the plain of Dura, in the province of Bavel.
Nevukhadnetzar 1 answered them, Is it on purpose, Shadrakh, Meshakh, and `Aved-Nego, that you don't serve my god, nor worship the golden image which I have set up?
*What value does the engraved image have, that its maker has engraved it; the molten image, even the teacher of lies, that he who fashions its form trusts in it, to make mute idols?
You see and hear, that not at Ephesus alone, but almost throughout all Asia, this Sha'ul has persuaded and turned away many people, saying that they are no gods, that are made with hands.