מַסֵּכָה

He took the gold from their hands, and with an engraving tool he fashioned it into a molten calf. And they said, “These, O Israel, are your gods, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!”

How quickly they have turned aside from the way that I commanded them! They have made for themselves a molten calf and have bowed down to it. They have sacrificed to it and said, ‘These, O Israel, are your gods, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.’”

You shall make no molten gods for yourselves.

Do not turn to idols or make for yourselves molten gods. I am the LORD your God.

…you must drive out before you all the inhabitants of the land, destroy all their carved images and cast idols, and demolish all their high places.

And the LORD said to me, “Get up and go down from here at once, for your people, whom you brought out of Egypt, have corrupted themselves. How quickly they have turned aside from the way that I commanded them! They have made for themselves a molten image.”

And I saw how you had sinned against the LORD your God; you had made for yourselves a molten calf. You had turned aside quickly from the way that the LORD had commanded you.

‘Cursed is the man who makes a carved idol or molten image—an abomination to the LORD, the work of the hands of a craftsman—and sets it up in secret.’ And let all the people say, ‘Amen!’

And when he had returned the eleven hundred shekels of silver to his mother, she said, “I wholly dedicate the silver to the LORD for my son’s benefit, to make a graven image and a molten idol. Therefore I will now return it to you.”

So he returned the silver to his mother, and she took two hundred shekels of silver and gave them to a silversmith, who made them into a graven image and a molten idol. And they were placed in the house of Micah.

Then the five men who had gone to spy out the land of Laish said to their brothers, “Did you know that one of these houses has an ephod, household gods, a graven image, and a molten idol? Now think about what you should do.”

And the five men who had gone to spy out the land went inside and took the graven image, the ephod, the household idols, and the molten idol, while the priest stood at the entrance of the gate with the six hundred armed men.

When they entered Micah’s house and took the graven image, the ephod, the household idols, and the molten idol, the priest said to them, “What are you doing?”

You have done more evil than all who came before you. You have proceeded to make for yourself other gods and molten images to provoke Me, and you have flung Me behind your back.

They abandoned all the commandments of the LORD their God and made for themselves two cast idols of calves and an Asherah pole. They bowed down to all the host of heaven and served Baal.

Instead, he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel and even made cast images of the Baals.

In the eighth year of his reign, while he was still young, Josiah began to seek the God of his father David, and in the twelfth year he began to cleanse Judah and Jerusalem of the high places, the Asherah poles, the carved idols, and the cast images.

Then in his presence the altars of the Baals were torn down, and he cut to pieces the incense altars that were above them. He shattered the Asherah poles, the carved idols, and the cast images, crushed them to dust, and scattered them over the graves of those who had sacrificed to them.

Even when they cast for themselves an image of a calf and said, ‘This is your God who brought you up out of Egypt,’ and when they committed terrible blasphemies,

At Horeb they made a calf and worshiped a molten image.

On this mountain He will swallow up the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations;

Indeed, the bed is too short to stretch out on, and the blanket too small to wrap around you.

“Woe to the rebellious children,” declares the LORD, “to those who carry out a plan that is not Mine, who form an alliance, but against My will, heaping up sin upon sin.

So you will desecrate your silver-plated idols and your gold-plated images. You will throw them away like menstrual cloths, saying to them, “Be gone!”

But those who trust in idols and say to molten images, ‘You are our gods!’ will be turned back in utter shame.

Now they sin more and more and make for themselves cast images, idols skillfully made from their silver, all of them the work of craftsmen. People say of them, “They offer human sacrifice and kiss the calves!”

The LORD has issued a command concerning you, O Nineveh: “There will be no descendants to carry on your name. I will cut off the carved image and cast idol from the house of your gods; I will prepare your grave, for you are contemptible.”

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.