יָעַל

Do not turn aside after worthless things that cannot profit you or deliver you, for they are empty.

Should he argue with useless words or speeches that serve no purpose?

Who is the Almighty, that we should serve Him, and what would we gain if we pray to Him?’

They tear up my path; they profit from my destruction, with no one to restrain them.

For you ask, ‘What does it profit me, and what benefit do I gain apart from sin?’

Ill-gotten treasures profit nothing, but righteousness brings deliverance from death.

Riches are worthless in the day of wrath, but righteousness brings deliverance from death.

…everyone will be put to shame because of a people useless to them. They bring neither help nor benefit, but only shame and disgrace.”

This is the burden against the beasts of the Negev: Through a land of hardship and distress, of lioness and lion, of viper and flying serpent, they carry their wealth on the backs of donkeys and their treasures on the humps of camels, to a people of no profit to them.

All makers of idols are nothing, and the things they treasure are worthless. Their witnesses fail to see or comprehend, so they are put to shame.

Who fashions a god or casts an idol which profits him nothing?

So take your stand with your spells and with your many sorceries, with which you have wearied yourself from your youth. Perhaps you will succeed; perhaps you will inspire terror!

Thus says the LORD your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: “I am the LORD your God, who teaches you for your benefit, who directs you in the way you should go.

I will expose your righteousness and your works, and they will not profit you.

The priests did not ask, ‘Where is the LORD?’ The experts in the law no longer knew Me, and the leaders rebelled against Me. The prophets prophesied by Baal and followed useless idols.

Has a nation ever changed its gods? (Yet they are not gods at all.) But My people have exchanged their Glory for useless idols.

But look, you keep trusting in deceptive words to no avail.

They have sown wheat but harvested thorns. They have exhausted themselves to no avail. Bear the shame of your harvest because of the fierce anger of the LORD.”

O LORD, my strength and my fortress, my refuge in the day of distress, the nations will come to You from the ends of the earth, and they will say, “Our fathers inherited nothing but lies, worthless idols of no benefit at all.

“Indeed,” declares the LORD, “I am against those who prophesy false dreams and retell them to lead My people astray with their reckless lies. It was not I who sent them or commanded them, and they are of no benefit at all to these people,” declares the LORD.

What use is an idol, that a craftsman should carve it—or an image, a teacher of lies? For its maker trusts in his own creation; he makes idols that cannot speak.