8 But even they are inexcusable:

9 If they could understand so much that they were able to search the temporal world, why did they not immediately find its Lord?

10 But more miserable are they, and their hopes are in the soulless, who call gods the works of human hands, gold and silver, works of art, images of animals, or worthless stone, the work of an old hand.

11 Or a certain woodworker, having cut down a good tree, skilfully stripped off all the bark from it, and having worked it beautifully, made of it a vessel useful for the use of life,

12 And the scraps of work he used for cooking, and he was satisfied;

13 And one of the cuttings, good for nothing, a crooked and knotty tree, he took it, and carefully rounded it in his leisure, and having worked it with the experience of a connoisseur, likened it to the image of a man,

14 Or he made it like a lowly animal, and smeared it with meerk, and covered the surface thereof with paint, and painted over every defect in it,

15 And having made for him a place worthy of him, he hung him on the wall, having fixed him with iron.

16 Therefore, in order that his work should not fall, he took care beforehand, knowing that it could not help itself, for it was an idol and had need of help.

17 And when he prays before him for his gains, for marriage, and for children, he is not ashamed to speak to the soulless,

18 And he cries out for health to the weak, he begs for life that is dead, he begs for help that which is utterly incapable, For a journey that is not able to tread,

19 For gain, for trade, and for the success of the hands, that which is not at all able to do with the hands, asks for strength that which is most powerless.

Chapter 14

1 Again, another, when he is about to sail and sail over the fierce waves, calls to the aid of a tree weaker than the ship that bears him;