To Know You Is Complete Righteousness

Benefits of Worshiping the True God But thou, our God, art kind and true, patient, and ruling all things in mercy. For even if we sin we are thine, knowing thy power; but we will not sin, because we know that we are accounted thine. For to know thee is complete righteousness, and to know thy power is the root of immortality. For neither has the evil intent of human art misled us, nor the fruitless toil of painters, a figure stained with varied colors, whose appearance arouses yearning in fools, so that they desire the lifeless form of a dead image. Lovers of evil things and fit for such objects of hope are those who either make or desire or worship them. The Foolishness of Worshiping Clay Idols For when a potter kneads the soft earth and laboriously molds each vessel for our service, he fashions out of the same clay both the vessels that serve clean uses and those for contrary uses, making all in like manner; but which shall be the use of each of these the worker in clay decides. With misspent toil, he forms a futile god from the same clay— this man who was made of earth a short time before and after a little while goes to the earth from which he was taken, when he is required to return the soul that was lent him. But he is not concerned that he is destined to die or that his life is brief, but he competes with workers in gold and silver, and imitates workers in copper; and he counts it his glory that he molds counterfeit gods. His heart is ashes, his hope is cheaper than dirt, and his life is of less worth than clay, because he failed to know the one who formed him and inspired him with an active soul and breathed into him a living spirit. But he considered our existence an idle game, and life a festival held for profit, for he says one must get money however one can, even by base means. For this man, more than all others, knows that he sins when he makes from earthy matter fragile vessels and graven images. But most foolish, and more miserable than an infant, are all the enemies who oppressed thy people. For they thought that all their heathen idols were gods, though these have neither the use of their eyes to see with, nor nostrils with which to draw breath, nor ears with which to hear, nor fingers to feel with, and their feet are of no use for walking. For a man made them, and one whose spirit is borrowed formed them; for no man can form a god which is like himself. He is mortal, and what he makes with lawless hands is dead, for he is better than the objects he worships, since he has life, but they never have. Serpents in the Desert The enemies of thy people worship even the most hateful animals, which are worse than all others, when judged by their lack of intelligence; and even as animals they are not so beautiful in appearance that one would desire them, but they have escaped both the praise of God and his blessing.

Wisdom 15:1–19 contrasts the patience of the true God with the folly of those who shape clay into gods. The pivot of the passage is the confession that 'to know thee is complete righteousness, and to know thy power is the root of immortality' (Wis 15:3). The rest of the chapter exposes idolatry as a failure to know the Maker—and therefore a failure of wisdom itself.