Habakkuk 2:18

"What profiteth the graven image? that the maker thereof hath graven it; the molten image, even the teacher of lies, that he that fashioneth its form trusteth therein, to make dumb idols?"

It is surprising to some commentators that Babylon should have been denounced for this sin, the popular view being that pagan nations did not know any better. But the truth is that all of the pre-Christian Gentile nations had received from God ample revelation to have prevented idol worship if only the people had been willing to receive it. Babylon, a subject of Assyria, at the same time, generally, of Jonah's conversion of the entire city of Nineveh, certainly did know better than to fashion graven images and to worship them. "God manifested it unto them" (Romans 1:19).

"What profit ..." What profit ever pertained to any graven religious image? How utterly foolish, even to abject stupidity, is the conduct of any nation that "trusteth" in such devices? The same question must be raised with references to religious communions that rely upon such devices for the achievement of any purpose whatsoever. Besides being directly condemned and proscribed by the Decalogue itself, the graven image is worse than useless, it is a "teacher of lies" as this verse declares.

"The idol is a teacher of lies, inasmuch as it sustains the delusion, partly by itself, and partly by its priests, that it is God, and that it can do what men expect from God; whereas, it is nothing more than a dumb nonentity."[40]

As for the allegation that a graven image can in any manner whatsoever "remind one of God," that also is another falsehood. How could that which is blind, deaf, mute, powerless, helpless, unable to move or think, subject to the erosion of time, and eventually stripped and denuded even by the atmosphere itself; how could such a THING remind one of the infinite and compassionate God ?

Hailey called attention to the fact that Isaiah has a classic sarcasm against all idols (Isaiah 44:9-20). Barnes pointed out that men still bow down to idols, even though the habit of making graven images has been somewhat curtailed from the times of rampant idol worship as practiced in ancient Babylon.

"And what else are men's idols of wealth, honor, fame, which he makes to himself, the creatures of his own hands or mind, their greatness existing chiefly in his own imagination, before which he bows down himself, who is the image of God?[41]