ReverendExamined devotion

Wisdom 14 • The making of idols and its consequences — Greek text and reception

Saints Translation: Wisdom 1–19 [V1]

Each card preserves the Greek reading and its textual and reception notes. This source provides a Greek study edition; Hebrew counterparts and Hebrew–Greek classifications are not supplied.

Chapter 14 • The making of idols and its consequences

Wood that serves life and wood called a god

Verse 14:1

Greek–English Saints Priority

Again, someone preparing for a voyage and about to traverse wild waves

calls upon a piece of wood more rotten than the ship carrying him.

Textual & Reception Notes

The comparative exposes the contrast between a useful vessel and the object invoked for help.

Verse 14:2

Greek–English Saints Priority

For the desire for gain devised that ship,

and wisdom, the artisan, fashioned it;

Textual & Reception Notes

The feminine artisan description continues the vocabulary applied to wisdom; the immediate work is shipbuilding.

Verse 14:3

Greek–English Saints Priority

but Your providence, Father, steers it,

for You gave a way even in the sea

and a safe path among the waves,

Textual & Reception Notes

Direct address resumes. The title Father is explicit.

Verse 14:4

Greek–English Saints Priority

showing that You can save from every danger,

so that even someone without skill may embark.

Textual & Reception Notes

‘Danger’ supplies the contextual object of ‘from everything’; no guarantee about a specific modern voyage is added.

Verse 14:5

Greek–English Saints Priority

You will that the works of Your wisdom should not be idle;

therefore human beings entrust their lives even to a very small piece of wood,

and, crossing the surge on a raft, they were brought safely through.

Textual & Reception Notes

The shift from present entrusting to past deliverance is retained.

Verse 14:6

Greek–English Saints Priority

For even at the beginning, when arrogant giants were perishing,

the hope of the world took refuge on a raft

and left to the age a seed for generation, steered by Your hand.

Textual & Reception Notes

The source explicitly says giants and raft. The unnamed survivor is described as the world’s hope; a familiar personal name or ark label is not substituted.

Verse 14:7

Greek–English Saints Priority

For blessed is wood through which righteousness comes about;

Textual & Reception Notes

The immediate contrast is between wood used for a righteous purpose and the handmade object called a god in the next verse.

Verse 14:8

Greek–English Saints Priority

but the handmade object is accursed, both it and its maker:

the one because he made it,

and the other because, though corruptible, it was named a god.

Textual & Reception Notes

The two grounds correspond to maker and object.

Verse 14:9

Greek–English Saints Priority

For equally hateful to God are the ungodly person and his ungodliness;

Textual & Reception Notes

The statement about person and conduct is explicit; neither member is omitted.

Verse 14:10

Greek–English Saints Priority

for what was done will be punished together with the one who did it.

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 14:11

Greek–English Saints Priority

Therefore there will also be a visitation upon the nations’ idols,

because within God’s creation they became an abomination,

stumbling blocks to human souls,

and a snare for the feet of fools.

Textual & Reception Notes

Ἐπισκοπή has a punitive force here; the source’s same visitation vocabulary has favorable force elsewhere.

Grief, rulers, and artistic flattery

Verse 14:12

Greek–English Saints Priority

For the devising of idols is the beginning of sexual immorality,

and their invention the corruption of life.

Textual & Reception Notes

Πορνεία is rendered sexual immorality in the ensuing moral critique; associations with religious unfaithfulness are not inserted as a replacement.

Verse 14:13

Greek–English Saints Priority

For they did not exist from the beginning,

nor will they exist forever;

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 14:14

Greek–English Saints Priority

through human vainglory they entered the world,

and therefore a swift end was planned for them.

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 14:15

Greek–English Saints Priority

For a father worn down by untimely grief,

having made an image of a child swiftly taken away,

now honored as a god the one who had once been a dead human being,

and handed on mysteries and rites to those under him.

Textual & Reception Notes

This is the author’s account of a route to image worship; no independently verified historical origin is claimed by the translation.

Verse 14:16

Greek–English Saints Priority

Then, strengthened over time, the ungodly custom was kept as law.

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 14:17

Greek–English Saints Priority

And carved images were worshiped at rulers’ commands;

when people could not honor them face to face because they lived far away,

they reproduced their distant appearance

and made a visible image of the honored king,

so that by their zeal they might flatter the absent one as though present.

Textual & Reception Notes

The first plural refers to rulers; the account then focuses on an honored king. The absent/present contrast is retained.

Verse 14:18

Greek–English Saints Priority

The artist’s ambition urged even those who did not know the king

toward an intensification of worship;

Textual & Reception Notes

‘The king’ supplies the understood object of not knowing in the preceding royal-image context.

Verse 14:19

Greek–English Saints Priority

for, perhaps wishing to please the ruler,

he used his art to force the likeness toward greater beauty.

Textual & Reception Notes

The qualifying ‘perhaps’ is explicit. The crafted likeness is made more attractive than its model.

Verse 14:20

Greek–English Saints Priority

The multitude, drawn by the charm of the workmanship,

now reckoned as an object of worship the human being whom they had honored a little before.

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 14:21

Greek–English Saints Priority

And this became an ambush for life,

because human beings, enslaved either to misfortune or to royal power,

bestowed upon stones and pieces of wood the name that cannot be shared.

Textual & Reception Notes

The unshareable name is the divine designation in the argument; the text does not here supply a particular proper name.

False worship and the corruption of life

Verse 14:22

Greek–English Saints Priority

Then it was not enough to go astray about the knowledge of God;

living in the great war of ignorance,

they also call such great evils peace.

Textual & Reception Notes

The war/peace opposition belongs to the author’s moral description.

Verse 14:23

Greek–English Saints Priority

For while celebrating rites that murder children, or secret mysteries,

or frenzied revelries with strange customs,

Textual & Reception Notes

The alternatives remain separate; the sentence’s main assertion follows.

Verse 14:24

Greek–English Saints Priority

they no longer keep either lives or marriages pure;

one kills another by ambush or grieves him by adultery.

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 14:25

Greek–English Saints Priority

Bloodshed and murder, theft and deceit, hold everything in confusion,

corruption, unfaithfulness, disturbance, perjury,

Textual & Reception Notes

The catalogue continues in the next verse; its individual terms are retained.

Verse 14:26

Greek–English Saints Priority

confusion of good things, forgetfulness of favor,

defilement of souls, alteration of natural relations,

disorder in marriages, adultery, and licentiousness.

Textual & Reception Notes

Γενέσεως ἐναλλαγή is literally a change or interchange of generation/birth. ‘Alteration of natural relations’ is provisional in this sexual and familial catalogue; the exact sense remains for lexical review and is not equated with a named modern identity.

Verse 14:27

Greek–English Saints Priority

For worship of nameless idols

is the beginning, cause, and end of every evil.

Textual & Reception Notes

All three terms—beginning, cause, end—are explicit.

Verse 14:28

Greek–English Saints Priority

For they either go mad in their merrymaking, or prophesy lies,

or live unjustly, or readily swear falsely.

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 14:29

Greek–English Saints Priority

For trusting in lifeless idols,

they do not expect to be harmed when they swear wrongly.

Textual & Reception Notes

The expectation of impunity is attributed to the worshipers.

Verse 14:30

Greek–English Saints Priority

But just consequences will pursue them for both things:

because they thought wrongly about God by attending to idols,

and swore unjustly in deceit, despising holiness.

Textual & Reception Notes

The two grounds of judgment are distinguished.

Verse 14:31

Greek–English Saints Priority

For it is not the power of those by whom they swear,

but the justice due to sinners,

that always pursues the transgression of the unrighteous.

Textual & Reception Notes

The punishment is not attributed to the idols’ actual power; the source expressly denies that.