⁸But the idol made with hands is accursed, and so is he who made it;
because he did the work, and the perishable thing was named a god.
⁹For equally hateful to God are the ungodly man and his ungodliness,
¹⁰for what was done will be punished together with him who did it.
¹¹Therefore there will be a visitation also upon the heathen idols,
because, though part of what God created,
they became an abomination,
and became traps for the souls of men and a snare to the feet of the foolish.

Origins of idolatry.  Wis.14.12-21

¹²For the idea of making idols was the beginning of fornication,
and the invention of them was the corruption of life,
¹³for neither have they existed from the beginning nor will they exist for ever.
¹⁴For through the vanity of men they entered the world,
and therefore their speedy end has been planned.
¹⁵For a father, consumed with grief at an untimely bereavement,
made an image of his child, who had been suddenly taken from him;
and he now honoured as a god what was once a dead human being,
and handed on to his dependents secret rites and initiations.
¹⁶Then the ungodly custom, grown strong with time, was kept as a law,
and at the command of monarchs graven images were worshipped.
¹⁷When men could not honour monarchs in their presence, since they lived at a distance,
they imagined their appearance far away,
and made a visible image of the king whom they honoured,
so that by their zeal they might flatter the absent one as though present.
¹⁸Then the ambition of the craftsman impelled even those who did not know the king to intensify their worship.
¹⁹For he, perhaps wishing to please his ruler,
skilfully forced the likeness to take more beautiful form,
²⁰and the multitude, attracted by the charm of his work,
now regarded as an object of worship the one whom shortly before they had honoured as a man.
²¹And this became a hidden trap for mankind,
because men, in bondage to misfortune or to royal authority,
bestowed on objects of stone or wood the name that ought not to be shared.

Results of idolatry.  Wis.14.22-31

²²Afterward it was not enough for them to err about the knowledge of God,
but they live in great strife due to ignorance,
and they call such great evils peace.
²³For whether they kill children in their initiations, or celebrate secret mysteries,
or hold frenzied revels with strange customs,
²⁴they no longer keep either their lives or their marriages pure,
but they either treacherously kill one another,
or grieve one another by adultery,
²⁵and all is a raging riot of blood and murder, theft and deceit,
corruption, faithlessness, tumult, perjury,
²⁶confusion over what is good, forgetfulness of favours,
pollution of souls, sex perversion,
disorder in marriage, adultery, and debauchery.
²⁷For the worship of idols not to be named
is the beginning and cause and end of every evil.
²⁸For their worshippers either rave in exultation,
or prophesy lies,
or live unrighteously, or readily commit perjury;
²⁹for because they trust in lifeless idols
they swear wicked oaths and expect to suffer no harm.
³⁰But just penalties will overtake them on two counts:
because they thought wickedly of God in devoting themselves to idols,
and because in deceit they swore unrighteously through contempt for holiness.
³¹For it is not the power of the things by which men swear,
but the just penalty for those who sin,
that always pursues the transgression of the unrighteous.