1 You, our God,are gentle and trustworthy,patiently ruling the universewith mercy.
2 We know your mighty power,and so we remain your people,even if we sin.But knowing we are yourswill keep us from sin.
3 Nothing is more fittingthan knowing youand realizing that your poweris the way to endless life.
4 We have not been misledby wicked artists,who made bright-colored idols
5 to encourage fools to worshipthose lifeless images.
6 Those who make or worshipidols as objects of hopewill get what they deservefor loving such evil things.
7 Potters form ordinary dishes and special dishes from the same lump of clay, and only the potters decide which ones will be ordinary or special.
8 Then—wasting their energy—these potters form a useless idol from the same clay. And not long ago, these potters themselves were made from the soil and will soon turn back into soil, just like all other humans, when it is time to return our borrowed souls.
9 But these potters don't care that we all must die or that life is short. They consider it a wonderful thing to mold false gods, and all they care about is competing with others, who make idols out of gold or silver or copper.
10 The heart of such workers is made of ashes, their hope is worth no more than dirt, and their lives are of less value than clay,
11 because they don't know you, the God who formed their bodies, then filled them with a lively soul and breathed into them a living spirit.
12 They think of life as a meaningless game or as a festival for making money, because they believe that we should try to get rich in every way possible, even by dishonesty.
13 More than anyone else, these people realize that they are sinning when they make dishes and idols from the same clay.
14 Our God, those Egyptians who abused your people were the most foolish of all and were more pitiful than infants.
15 This is because they believed their pagan idols really were gods—those images that could neither see nor breathe nor hear nor use their hands or feet.
16 They were made by some human whose soul was borrowed, and none of us can make a god that is our equal.
17 In fact, we humans are mortal ourselves, and any idol we make with our own evil hands is less than we are and is completely lifeless.
18 Those Egyptians worshiped snakes, the lowest form of animal life,
19 a form of life so ugly that you did not even give it your blessing.