Then the wood-carver measures a block of wood and draws a pattern on it. He works with chisel and plane and carves it into a human figure. He gives it human beauty and puts it in a little shrine.
Parallel translations
- WEB The carpenter stretches out a line. He marks it out with a pencil. He shapes it with planes. He marks it out with compasses, and shapes it like the figure of a man, with the beauty of a man, to reside in a house.
- KJV The carpenter stretcheth out his rule; he marketh it out with a line; he fitteth it with planes, and he marketh it out with the compass, and maketh it after the figure of a man, according to the beauty of a man; that it may remain in the house.
- BSB The woodworker extends a measuring line; he marks it out with a stylus; he shapes it with chisels and outlines it with a compass. He fashions it in the likeness of man, like man in all his glory, that it may dwell in a shrine.
- NKJV The craftsman stretches out his rule, He marks one out with chalk; He fashions it with a plane, He marks it out with the compass, And makes it like the figure of a man, According to the beauty of a man, that it may remain in the house.
- NASB The craftsman of wood extends a measuring line; he outlines it with a marker. He works it with carving knives and outlines it with a compass, and makes it like the form of a man, like the beauty of mankind, so that it may sit in a house.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
The carpenter carefully measures and shapes wood into a human figure to set up in a house. It exposes how an idol is merely a man-made imitation of a man.
Overview
With detailed craftsmanship, the woodworker fashions a god in the form of a man. The irony is that the creature shapes a 'creator' in his own image. This satire reveals idolatry as the reversal of true worship, sharpening the contrast with the God who made man, revealed in the incarnate Christ.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 15
- Judg 17:4–5When he restored the money to his mother, his mother took two hundred pieces of silver, and gave them to a silversmith, who made an engraved image and a molten image out of it. It was in the house of Micah.
- Ps 115:5–7They have mouths, but they don’t speak. They have eyes, but they don’t see.
- Deut 4:16–18lest you corrupt yourselves, and make yourself an engraved image in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female,
- Rom 1:23and traded the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and of birds, and four-footed animals, and creeping things.
- Acts 17:29Being then the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold, or silver, or stone, engraved by art and design of man.
- Gen 35:2Then Jacob said to his household, and to all who were with him, “Put away the foreign gods that are among you, purify yourselves, change your garments.
- Gen 31:32Anyone you find your gods with shall not live. Before our relatives, discern what is yours with me, and take it.” For Jacob didn’t know that Rachel had stolen them.
- Ezek 8:12Then he said to me, “Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man in his rooms of imagery? For they say, ‘Yahweh doesn’t see us. Yahweh has forsaken the land.’”
- Deut 27:15‘Cursed is the man who makes an engraved or molten image, an abomination to Yahweh, the work of the hands of the craftsman, and sets it up in secret.’ All the people shall answer and say, ‘Amen.’
- Judg 18:24He said, “You have taken away my gods which I made, and the priest, and have gone away! What more do I have? How can you ask me, ‘What ails you?’”
- Exod 20:4–5“You shall not make for yourselves an idol, nor any image of anything that is in the heavens above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:
- Gen 31:19Now Laban had gone to shear his sheep: and Rachel stole the teraphim that were her father’s.
- Gen 31:30Now, you want to be gone, because you greatly longed for your father’s house, but why have you stolen my gods?”
- Isa 41:7So the carpenter encourages the goldsmith. He who smoothes with the hammer encourages him who strikes the anvil, saying of the soldering, “It is good”; and he fastens it with nails, that it might not totter.
- Deut 4:28There you shall serve gods, the work of men’s hands, wood and stone, which neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell.
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Christ at the center
Isaiah sees him most clearly: the virgin's son Immanuel, the child on David's throne, the shoot from Jesse, the light to the nations, and above all the Suffering Servant pierced for our transgressions (ch. 53).
How Isaiah 44:13 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.