Idolatry: Warnings Against, and Punishments of
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Deuteronomy 17:2–5
If a man or woman among you in one of the towns that the LORD your God gives you is found doing evil in the sight of the LORD your God by transgressing His covenant / and going to worship other gods, bowing down to them or to the sun or moon or any of the host of heaven—which I have forbidden— / and if it is reported and you hear about it, you must investigate it thoroughly. If the report is true and such an abomination has happened in Israel,
2 Chronicles 28:23
Since Damascus had defeated him, he sacrificed to their gods and said, “Because the gods of the kings of Aram have helped them, I will sacrifice to them that they may help me.” But these gods were the downfall of Ahaz and of all Israel.
Nehemiah 9:27–37
So You delivered them into the hands of enemies who oppressed them, and in their time of distress they cried out to You. From heaven You heard them, and in Your great compassion You gave them deliverers who saved them from the hands of their enemies. / But as soon as they had rest, they again did evil in Your sight. So You abandoned them to the hands of their enemies, who had dominion over them. When they cried out to You again, You heard from heaven, and You delivered them many times in Your compassion. / You admonished them to turn back to Your law, but they were arrogant and disobeyed Your commandments. They sinned against Your ordinances, by which a man will live if he practices them. They stubbornly shrugged their shoulders; they stiffened their necks and would not obey.
Psalm 78:58–64
They enraged Him with their high places and provoked His jealousy with their idols. / On hearing it, God was furious and rejected Israel completely. / He abandoned the tabernacle of Shiloh, the tent He had pitched among men.
Psalm 106:34–42
They did not destroy the peoples as the LORD had commanded them, / but they mingled with the nations and adopted their customs. / They worshiped their idols, which became a snare to them.
Isaiah 1:29–31
Surely you will be ashamed of the sacred oaks in which you have delighted; you will be embarrassed by the gardens that you have chosen. / For you will become like an oak whose leaves are withered, like a garden without water. / The strong man will become tinder and his work will be a spark; both will burn together, with no one to quench the flames.
Isaiah 2:6–22
For You have abandoned Your people, the house of Jacob, because they are filled with influences from the east; they are soothsayers like the Philistines; they strike hands with the children of foreigners. / Their land is full of silver and gold, with no limit to their treasures; their land is full of horses, with no limit to their chariots. / Their land is full of idols; they bow down to the work of their hands, to what their fingers have made.
Isaiah 30:22
So you will desecrate your silver-plated idols and your gold-plated images. You will throw them away like menstrual cloths, saying to them, “Be gone!”
Isaiah 57:3–13
“But come here, you sons of a sorceress, you offspring of adulterers and prostitutes! / Whom are you mocking? At whom do you snarl and stick out your tongue? Are you not children of transgression, offspring of deceit, / who burn with lust among the oaks, under every luxuriant tree, who slaughter your children in the valleys, under the clefts of the rocks?
Isaiah 65:3, 4
to a people who continually provoke Me to My face, sacrificing in the gardens and burning incense on altars of brick, / sitting among the graves, spending nights in secret places, eating the meat of pigs and polluted broth from their bowls.
Jeremiah 1:15, 16
For I am about to summon all the clans and kingdoms of the north,” declares the LORD. “Their kings will come and set up their thrones at the entrance of the gates of Jerusalem. They will attack all her surrounding walls and all the other cities of Judah. / I will pronounce My judgments against them for all their wickedness, because they have forsaken Me to burn incense to other gods and to worship the works of their own hands.
Jeremiah 3:1–11
“If a man divorces his wife and she leaves him to marry another, can he ever return to her? Would not such a land be completely defiled? But you have played the harlot with many lovers—and you would return to Me?” declares the LORD. / “Lift up your eyes to the barren heights and see. Is there any place where you have not been violated? You sat beside the highways waiting for your lovers, like a nomad in the desert. You have defiled the land with your prostitution and wickedness. / Therefore the showers have been withheld, and no spring rains have fallen. Yet you have the brazen look of a prostitute; you refuse to be ashamed.
Jeremiah 5:1–17
“Go up and down the streets of Jerusalem. Look now and take note; search her squares. If you can find a single person, anyone who acts justly, anyone who seeks the truth, then I will forgive the city. / Although they say, ‘As surely as the LORD lives,’ they are swearing falsely.” / O LORD, do not Your eyes look for truth? You struck them, but they felt no pain. You finished them off, but they refused to accept discipline. They have made their faces harder than stone and refused to repent.
Jeremiah 7:1
This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD, saying,
Jeremiah 8:1, 2, 19
“At that time,” declares the LORD, “the bones of the kings of Judah, the bones of the officials, the bones of the priests, the bones of the prophets, and the bones of the people of Jerusalem will be removed from their graves. / They will be exposed to the sun and moon, and to all the host of heaven which they have loved, served, followed, consulted, and worshiped. Their bones will not be gathered up or buried, but will become like dung lying on the ground. / Listen to the cry of the daughter of my people from a land far away: “Is the LORD no longer in Zion? Is her King no longer there?” “Why have they provoked Me to anger with their carved images, with their worthless foreign idols?”
Jeremiah 13:9–27
“This is what the LORD says: In the same way I will ruin the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem. / These evil people, who refuse to listen to My words, who follow the stubbornness of their own hearts, and who go after other gods to serve and worship them, they will be like this loincloth—of no use at all. / For just as a loincloth clings to a man’s waist, so I have made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah cling to Me, declares the LORD, so that they might be My people for My renown and praise and glory. But they did not listen.
Jeremiah 16:1
Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying,
Jeremiah 17:1–6
“The sin of Judah is written with an iron stylus, engraved with a diamond point on the tablets of their hearts and on the horns of their altars. / Even their children remember their altars and Asherah poles by the green trees and on the high hills. / O My mountain in the countryside, I will give over your wealth and all your treasures as plunder, because of the sin of your high places, within all your borders.
Jeremiah 18:13–15
Therefore this is what the LORD says: “Inquire among the nations: Who has ever heard things like these? Virgin Israel has done a most terrible thing. / Does the snow of Lebanon ever leave its rocky slopes? Or do its cool waters flowing from a distance ever run dry? / Yet My people have forgotten Me. They burn incense to worthless idols that make them stumble in their ways, leaving the ancient roads to walk on rutted bypaths instead of on the highway.
Jeremiah 19:1
This is what the LORD says: “Go and buy a clay jar from a potter. Take some of the elders of the people and leaders of the priests,
Jeremiah 22:9
Then people will reply, ‘Because they have forsaken the covenant of the LORD their God and have worshiped and served other gods.’”
Jeremiah 32:35
They have built the high places of Baal in the Valley of Hinnom to make their sons and daughters pass through the fire to Molech—something I never commanded them, nor had it ever entered My mind, that they should commit such an abomination and cause Judah to sin.
Jeremiah 44:1
This is the word that came to Jeremiah concerning all the Jews living in the land of Egypt—in Migdol, Tahpanhes, and Memphis—and in the land of Pathros:
Jeremiah 48:8
The destroyer will move against every city, and not one town will escape. The valley will also be ruined, and the high plain will be destroyed, as the LORD has said.
Ezekiel 6:1
And the word of the LORD came to me, saying,
Ezekiel 7:19
They will throw their silver into the streets, and their gold will seem unclean. Their silver and gold cannot save them in the day of the wrath of the LORD. They cannot satisfy their appetites or fill their stomachs with wealth, for it became the stumbling block that brought their iniquity.
Ezekiel 8:5–18
“Son of man,” He said to me, “now lift up your eyes to the north.” So I lifted up my eyes to the north, and in the entrance north of the Altar Gate I saw this idol of jealousy. / “Son of man,” He said to me, “do you see what they are doing—the great abominations that the house of Israel is committing—to drive Me far from My sanctuary? Yet you will see even greater abominations.” / Then He brought me to the entrance to the court, and I looked and saw a hole in the wall.
Ezekiel 9:1
Then I heard Him call out in a loud voice, saying, “Draw near, O executioners of the city, each with a weapon of destruction in hand.”
Ezekiel 14:1–14
Then some of the elders of Israel came and sat down before me. / And the word of the LORD came to me, saying, / “Son of man, these men have set up idols in their hearts and put wicked stumbling blocks before their faces. Should I consult with them in any way?
Ezekiel 16:1
Again the word of the LORD came to me, saying,
Ezekiel 20:1
In the seventh year, on the tenth day of the fifth month, some of the elders of Israel came to inquire of the LORD, and they sat down before me.
Ezekiel 22:4
you are guilty of the blood you have shed, and you are defiled by the idols you have made. You have brought your days to a close and have come to the end of your years. Therefore I have made you a reproach to the nations and a mockery to all the lands.
Ezekiel 23:1
Again the word of the LORD came to me, saying,
Ezekiel 44:10–12
Surely the Levites who wandered away from Me when Israel went astray, and who wandered away from Me after their idols, will bear the consequences of their iniquity. / Yet they shall be ministers in My sanctuary, having charge of the gates of the temple and ministering there. They shall slaughter the burnt offerings and other sacrifices for the people and stand before them to minister to them. / Because they ministered before their idols and became a stumbling block of iniquity to the house of Israel, therefore I swore with an uplifted hand concerning them that they would bear the consequences of their iniquity, declares the Lord GOD.
Hosea 1:2
When the LORD first spoke through Hosea, He told him, “Go, take a prostitute as your wife and have children of adultery, because this land is flagrantly prostituting itself by departing from the LORD.”
Hosea 2:2–5
Rebuke your mother, rebuke her, for she is not My wife, and I am not her husband. Let her remove the adultery from her face and the unfaithfulness from between her breasts. / Otherwise, I will strip her naked and expose her like the day of her birth. I will make her like a desert and turn her into a parched land, and I will let her die of thirst. / I will have no compassion on her children, because they are the children of adultery.
Hosea 4:12–19
My people consult their wooden idols, and their divining rods inform them. For a spirit of prostitution leads them astray and they have played the harlot against their God. / They sacrifice on the mountaintops and burn offerings on the hills, under oak, poplar, and terebinth, because their shade is pleasant. And so your daughters turn to prostitution and your daughters-in-law to adultery. / I will not punish your daughters when they prostitute themselves, nor your daughters-in-law when they commit adultery. For the men themselves go off with prostitutes and offer sacrifices with shrine prostitutes. So a people without understanding will come to ruin.
Hosea 5:1–3
“Hear this, O priests! Take heed, O house of Israel! Give ear, O royal house! For this judgment is against you because you have been a snare at Mizpah, a net spread out on Tabor. / The rebels are deep in slaughter; but I will chastise them all. / I know all about Ephraim, and Israel is not hidden from Me. For now, O Ephraim, you have turned to prostitution; Israel is defiled.
Hosea 8:5–14
He has rejected your calf, O Samaria. My anger burns against them. How long will they be incapable of innocence? / For this thing is from Israel—a craftsman made it, and it is not God. It will be broken to pieces, that calf of Samaria. / For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind. There is no standing grain; what sprouts fails to yield flour. Even if it should produce, the foreigners would swallow it up.
Hosea 9:10
I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness. I saw your fathers as the firstfruits of the fig tree in its first season. But they went to Baal-peor, and consecrated themselves to Shame; so they became as detestable as the thing they loved.
Hosea 10:1
Israel was a luxuriant vine, yielding fruit for himself. The more his fruit increased, the more he increased the altars. The better his land produced, the better he made the sacred pillars.
Hosea 11:2
But the more I called Israel, the farther they departed from Me. They sacrificed to the Baals and burned incense to carved images.
Hosea 12:11–14
Is there iniquity in Gilead? They will surely come to nothing. Do they sacrifice bulls in Gilgal? Indeed, their altars will be heaps of stones in the furrows of the field. / Jacob fled to the land of Aram and Israel worked for a wife—for a wife he tended sheep. / But by a prophet the LORD brought Israel out of Egypt, and by a prophet he was preserved.
Hosea 13:1–4
When Ephraim spoke, there was trembling; he was exalted in Israel. But he incurred guilt through Baal, and he died. / Now they sin more and more and make for themselves cast images, idols skillfully made from their silver, all of them the work of craftsmen. People say of them, “They offer human sacrifice and kiss the calves!” / Therefore they will be like the morning mist, like the early dew that vanishes, like chaff blown from a threshing floor, like smoke through an open window.
Hosea 14:8
O Ephraim, what have I to do anymore with idols? It is I who answer and watch over him. I am like a flourishing cypress; your fruit comes from Me.
Amos 3:14
On the day I punish Israel for their transgressions, I will visit destruction on the altars of Bethel; the horns of the altar will be cut off, and they will fall to the ground.
Amos 4:4, 5
“Go to Bethel and transgress; rebel even more at Gilgal! Bring your sacrifices every morning, your tithes every three days. / Offer leavened bread as a thank offering, and loudly proclaim your freewill offerings. For that is what you children of Israel love to do,” declares the Lord GOD.
Amos 5:5
Do not seek Bethel or go to Gilgal; do not journey to Beersheba, for Gilgal will surely go into exile, and Bethel will come to nothing.
Micah 1:1–9
This is the word of the LORD that came to Micah the Moreshite in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah—what he saw regarding Samaria and Jerusalem: / Hear, O peoples, all of you; listen, O earth, and everyone in it! May the Lord GOD bear witness against you, the Lord from His holy temple. / For behold, the LORD comes forth from His dwelling place; He will come down and tread on the high places of the earth.
Micah 5:12–14
I will cut the sorceries from your hand, and you will have no fortune-tellers. / I will also cut off the carved images and sacred pillars from among you, so that you will no longer bow down to the work of your own hands. / I will root out the Asherah poles from your midst and demolish your cities.
Micah 6:16
You have kept the statutes of Omri and all the practices of Ahab’s house; you have followed their counsel. Therefore I will make you a desolation, and your inhabitants an object of contempt; you will bear the scorn of the nations.”
Zephaniah 1:1
This is the word of the LORD that came to Zephaniah son of Cushi, the son of Gedaliah, the son of Amariah, the son of Hezekiah, in the days of Josiah son of Amon king of Judah:
Malachi 2:11–13
Judah has broken faith; an abomination has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem. For Judah has profaned the LORD’s beloved sanctuary by marrying the daughter of a foreign god. / As for the man who does this, may the LORD cut off from the tents of Jacob everyone who is awake and aware—even if he brings an offering to the LORD of Hosts. / And this is another thing you do: You cover the altar of the LORD with tears, with weeping and groaning, because He no longer regards your offerings or receives them gladly from your hands.