459. And idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and wood, signifies that thus they are in worship from mere falsities. By "idols" in the Word, are signified the falsities of worship, and therefore to adore them signifies worship from falsities; and by "adoring idols of gold, silver, brass, stone, and wood," is signified worship from falsities of all kinds, and, taken collectively, worship from mere falsities. Moreover, the material of which idols were made, their forms, and their garments, among the ancients, represented the falsities of religion, from which was their worship: "idols of gold" signified falsities concerning Divine things; "idols of silver," falsities concerning spiritual things; "idols of brass," falsities concerning charity; "idols of stone," falsities concerning faith; and "idols of wood," falsities concerning good works. All these falsities exist in those who do not do the work of repentance, that is, shun evils as sins against God. [2] These things are signified in the spiritual sense by idols which were graven images and molten images, in the following passages:
Every man has become foolish by knowledge, every founder is affected with shame by his graven image, because his molten image is a lie, neither is there breath in them; they are vanity, a work of errors; in the time of their visitation they shall perish (Jer. 10:14-15; 51:17-18). The graven images are the work of the hands of the workman; they speak not; they are infatuated and grow foolish together; the wood is a teaching of vanities; they all are the work of the wise (Jer. 10:3-5, 8-10). What profiteth the graven image, that the maker and teacher of lies has graven it; that the maker of a lie has trusted in it? there is no breath in the midst of it (Hab. 2:18-19). In that day a man shall cast away his idols of silver and his idols of gold, which they made for themselves to bow themselves down to, to the moles and to the bats (Isa. 2:18, 20). They have made for themselves a molten image of their silver, idols according to their own intelligence, the whole the work of the artificers (Hos. 13:2). I will sprinkle clean waters upon you, that ye may be cleansed from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols (Ezek. 36:25). "Clean waters" are truths; "the idols" are the falsities of worship:
Ye shall judge unclean the covering of thy graven images of silver, and the clothing of thy molten image of gold; thou shalt scatter it as a menstruous cloth, thou shalt call it dung (Isa. 30:22). [3] Nor is anything but the falsities of religion and thence of worship signified by:
The gods of gold, of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone, which Belshazzar, king of Babylon, praised (worshiped), when he drank wine with his magnates, wives, and concubines out of the vessels of gold and silver of the temple of Jerusalem; for which the king was driven out from man and became like a beast (Dan. 5:1-5 seq.);
besides many other places (as Isaiah 10:10, 11; 21:9; 31:7; 40:19, 20; 41:29; 42:17; 48:5; Jeremiah 8:19; 50:38, 39; Ezekiel 6:4, 5; 14:3-6; Micah 1:7; 5:13; Psalms 115:4, 5; 135:15, 16; Leviticus 26:30). By idols are properly signified the falsities of worship from one's own intelligence. How a man fashions them, and afterwards accommodates them, so as to appear as truths, is fully described in Isaiah (44:9-20).
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