Wisdom of Solomon — Chapter 15
The living God and the lifeless works of human hands
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Greek-source study and notes · III. Wisdom
Belonging to the true God
15:1 But You, our God, are good and true,
patient, and governing all things in mercy.
15:2 For even if we sin, we are Yours, knowing Your might;
but we will not sin, knowing that we have been reckoned as Yours.
15:3 For to know You is complete righteousness,
and to know Your might is the root of immortality.
15:4 For neither the evil-devising invention of human beings misled us,
nor the fruitless labor of painters,
a form stained with varied colors,
15:5 the sight of which stirs desire in fools,
and one longs for the breathless form of a dead image.
15:6 Lovers of evil and worthy of such hopes
are those who make them, those who desire them, and those who worship them.
The potter who fashions a futile god
15:7 For a potter, laboriously kneading soft earth,
shapes each object for our service;
from the same clay he fashions alike
vessels serving clean purposes
and those serving the opposite;
and the clay-worker decides the use of each kind.
15:8 With evil labor he also shapes a futile god from the same clay,
though he himself, having come from earth a little before,
will shortly go back to that from which he was taken,
when the debt of his soul is demanded.
15:9 But his concern is not that he is about to die,
nor that his life is short;
instead, he competes with goldsmiths and silver-workers,
imitates bronze-workers,
and considers it glory that he fashions counterfeits.
15:10 His heart is ashes, and his hope more worthless than earth,
and his life more dishonorable than clay,
15:11 because he did not know the One who formed him,
who breathed into him an active soul
and breathed in a life-giving spirit.
15:12 Instead, they reckoned our life a plaything
and our existence a profitable fair;
for he says that one must make gain from whatever source, even evil.
15:13 For this man knows better than everyone that he is sinning,
when he manufactures fragile vessels and carved images from earthy material.
The worship of what cannot live or act
15:14 But all the enemies of Your people who oppressed them
are most foolish and more wretched than an infant’s soul,
15:15 because they also reckoned all the nations’ idols gods,
though these have neither use of eyes for sight,
nor nostrils for drawing in air,
nor ears to hear,
nor fingers of their hands to feel,
and their feet are idle for walking.
15:16 For a human being made them,
and one who had borrowed his spirit fashioned them;
for no human being can shape a god like himself.
15:17 Being mortal, he makes a dead thing with lawless hands;
for he is better than the objects he worships:
he at least has lived, but they never have.
15:18 They also worship the most hateful animals,
for compared in senselessness with the others, these are worse;
15:19 Nor, in their appearance as animals, are they beautiful enough to be desired,
and they have escaped both God’s praise and His blessing.
Source and editorial notes
Working translation preserved from the recovered manuscript of 8 September 2026. Declared source: Septuaginta, Rahlfs–Hanhart, 2006, Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, publisher’s Greek main text. Independent linguistic and critical-apparatus review remains outstanding. Source-access and reception claims in the inherited notes have not been freshly revalidated. Chapter and section headings are editorial.
Source numbering retained: chapter 17 ends at 17:20.
15:2 The conditional concession and the resolve not to sin both remain; neither is removed to simplify the argument.
15:4 The painted form explains the work criticized; the verse is not a general prohibition of all skilled labor.
15:5 The Greek moves from plural fools to a singular verb ‘longs’; the translation represents the individual within the class.
15:6 All three groups are explicit.
15:7 The vessels’ purposes differ while their material is the same. The potter is the judge of use in the analogy.
15:8 The debt image concerns the maker’s own borrowed life; the object he fashions does not share that life.
15:9 Κάμνειν is understood as dying in the stated short-life context. The three crafts are separately preserved.
15:10 The two comparatives are retained.
15:11 Soul and spirit are both expressed; neither clause is omitted as redundant.
15:12 The source shifts from plural ‘they reckoned’ to singular ‘he says.’ The commercial fair image and willingness to profit from evil remain.
15:13 The comparative knowledge of wrongdoing is an explicit part of the critique.
15:14 Direct address to God resumes. The comparison concerns the oppressors.
15:15 Every bodily function in the list is retained.
15:16 The borrowed spirit belongs to the maker. ‘Like himself’ reflects the argument that a living human cannot make a comparably living god.
15:17 The contrast is between the maker’s mortal life and the objects’ complete lack of life.
15:18 The author’s evaluative animal description is retained without assigning a modern biological ranking.
15:19 The first clause assesses the creatures’ animal appearance, not how things appear to animal observers. The final clause preserves the source’s strong claim within the polemic rather than silently reconciling it with another creation passage.
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