Jon Collins

Yeah.

So what do these things mean in their ancient context that might help us think about what it means for us in our context?

Okay, so first little vocabulary lesson on idolatry in the Bible.

The word used right here, don't make for yourself a, and then the Hebrew word's a noun, pestle.

Pestle.

It is used a little over 30 times in the Hebrew Bible.

It's a very common word.

What's great is that this noun, pesel, has a verb attached, pasal, which means to carve or to shape something.

Okay.

So it's the carved thing.

Pesel is the thing that you carved.

Yeah.

Yep.

And it can be referred to something you've chiseled out of stone or something that you've carved out of wood.

So wood or stone.

So a couple examples.

Habakkuk, in a little poem where he's making fun of people who trust their lives to idols, in Habakkuk 2.18, he says, What value is a pestle when its shaper is the one who pestled it?

Because the one who shaped his shaped object trusts in it, but it's an idol that can't talk.

You made it.

Why are you trusting in something that you made?