3. But your providence, O Father! guides it,for you have furnished even in the sea a road,and through the waves a steady path,
4. Showing that you can save from any danger,so that even one without skill may embark.
5. But you will that the products of your Wisdom be not idle;therefore people trust their lives even to most frail wood,and were safe crossing the waves on a raft.
6. For of old, when the proud giants were being destroyed,the hope of the universe, who took refuge on a raft,left to the world a future for the human family, under the guidance of your hand.
7. For blest is the wood through which righteousness comes about;
8. but the handmade idol is accursed, and its maker as well:he for having produced it, and the corruptible thing, because it was termed a god.
9. Equally odious to God are the evildoer and the evil deed;
10. and the thing made will be punished with its maker.
11. Therefore upon even the idols of the nations shall a judgment come,since they became abominable among God’s works,Snares for human soulsand a trap for the feet of the senseless.
12. For the source of wantonness is the devising of idols;and their invention, a corruption of life.
13. For in the beginning they were not,nor can they ever continue;
14. for from human emptiness they came into the world,and therefore a sudden end is devised for them.
15. For a father, afflicted with untimely mourning,made an image of the child so quickly taken from him,And now honored as a god what once was deadand handed down to his household mysteries and sacrifices.
16. Then, in the course of time, the impious practice gained strength and was observed as law,and graven things were worshiped by royal decrees.
17. People who lived so far away that they could not honor him in his presencecopied the appearance of the distant kingAnd made a public image of him they wished to honor,out of zeal to flatter the absent one as though present.
18. And to promote this observance among those to whom it was strange,the artisan’s ambition provided a stimulus.
19. For he, perhaps in his determination to please the ruler,labored over the likeness to the best of his skill;
20. And the masses, drawn by the charm of the workmanship,soon took as an object of worship the one who shortly before was honored as a human being.