King Jeroboam asked for advice. Then he made two golden calves. “It is too long a journey for you to go to Jerusalem to worship,” he said to the people. “Israel, here are your gods who brought you out of Egypt.”
“You people who have escaped from other nations, gather together and come before me; come near together. People who carry idols of wood don’t know what they are doing. They pray to a god who cannot save them.
Their idols are like scarecrows in melon fields; they cannot talk. Since they cannot walk, they must be carried. Do not be afraid of those idols, because they can’t hurt you, and they can’t help you either.”
Lord, you are my strength and my protection, my safe place in times of trouble. The nations will come to you from all over the world and say, “Our ancestors had only false gods, useless idols that didn’t help them.
“An idol does no good, because a human made it; it is only a statue that teaches lies. The one who made it expects his own work to help him, but he makes idols that can’t even speak!
But look at what this man Paul is doing. He has convinced and turned away many people in Ephesus and in almost all of Asia! He says the gods made by human hands are not real.
