At that point, the king got some advice and made two golden calves and said to the people, “It is too difficult for you to go up to Jerusalem. Behold, your gods, O Israel, which brought you up out of the land of Egypt.”
Assemble yourselves and come; draw near together, you fugitives of the nations. They have no knowledge who set up the wood of their carved image, and pray to a god that cannot save.
They are as a scarecrow in a cucumber field, but do not speak; they must be carried, because they cannot walk. Do not be afraid of them, for they cannot do evil, nor can they do good.
O Lord, my strength and my fortress, and my refuge in the day of affliction, the nations will come to You from the remote parts of the earth, and will say: Surely our fathers have inherited lies, vanity, and things in which there is no profit.
Nebuchadnezzar the king made an image of gold, whose height was sixty cubits and its width six cubits. He set it up in the plain of Dura in the province of Babylon.
Nebuchadnezzar spoke and said to them, “Is it true, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, that you do not serve my gods or worship the golden image which I have set up?
What profit is a carved image when its maker has carved it, a cast image, and a teacher of lies, that its maker trusts in what he has shaped when he makes mute idols?
And you see and hear, not only at Ephesus, but almost throughout all Asia, that this Paul has persuaded and turned away many people, saying that these things made by hands are not gods.
So concerning the eating of foods that are offered in sacrifice to idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is no other God but one.