14. We would here, as if all
nations on the earth were present, make one speech, and pour into the
ears of them all, words which should be heard in common:4673
| 4673
[Isa. xl. 18–20; xliv.
9–20; xlvi. 5–8.] |
Why,
pray, is this, O men! that of your own
accord you cheat and
deceive
yourselves by voluntary
blindness? Dispel the
darkness now, and,
returning to the
light of the
mind, look more closely and see what that
is which is going on, if only you retain your right,
4674
| 4674
i.e., the faculty of discernment, which is properly man’s. |
and are not beyond the reach
4675
| 4675
Lit., “are in the limits of.” |
of the reason
and
prudence given to you.
4676
| 4676
The ms. reads
his—“these”, emended, as above, vobis
in the margin of Ursinus, Elm., and LB. |
Those images which fill you
with
terror, and which you adore prostrate upon the ground
4677
in all the
temples, are
bones,
stones,
brass,
silver,
gold,
clay,
wood taken from
a
tree, or glue mixed with gypsum. Having been heaped together,
it may be, from a
harlot’s gauds or from a
woman’s
4678
| 4678
i.e., a respectable woman. |
ornaments,
from
camels’
bones or from the tooth of the Indian
beast,
4679
| 4679
i.e., the elephant’s tusk. |
from
cooking-pots
and little jars, from candlesticks and
lamps, or
from other less cleanly
vessels,
and having been melted down,
they were cast into these shapes and came out into the forms which you
see, baked in potters’
furnaces, produced by anvils and hammers,
scraped with the
silversmith’s, and filed down with
ordinary files, cleft
and hewn with saws, with
augers,
4680
| 4680 So
Salmasius, followed by Orelli, Hild., and Oehler, reading
furfuraculis, and LB., reading perforaculis for the
ms. furfure aculeis. |
with
axes,
dug
and hollowed out by the turning of borers,
and
smoothed with planes. Is not this, then, an error? Is it
not, to speak accurately,
folly to believe
that a
god which you
yourself made with care, to
kneel down trembling in
supplication to
that which has been formed by you, and while you know, and are assured
that it is the product
4681
| 4681
So the margin of Ursinus, Meursius (according to Orelli), Hild., and
Oehler, reading part-u-m for the ms. -e-—“is a part of your
labour,” etc. |
of the labour of your
hands,
4682
—to
cast
yourself down upon your face, beg aid suppliantly, and, in
adversity and time of distress,
ask it to succour
4683
| 4683
So the ms., both Roman edd., Elm., and
Orelli, reading numinis favore, for which LB. reads
favorem—“the favour of the propitious deity to
succour.” [Isaiah’s argument reproduced.] |
you
with gracious and divine favour?
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