Commentary - Isaiah 46:5-7

Bird's-eye view

In Isaiah 46:5-7, the Lord moves from declaring His unique power to save and carry His people (vv. 3-4) to a devastating and satirical critique of the idols worshipped by the nations. This is not a gentle theological disagreement; it is a polemical mockery of the highest order. God throws down a rhetorical gauntlet, asking to whom He might be compared. The question is designed to have no answer. He then dissects the entire process of idolatry, from its expensive origins to its pathetic immobility and impotence. The central contrast is between the living God who carries His children, and the dead gods that must be carried by their deluded worshippers. This passage is a master class in exposing the sheer irrationality and spiritual bankruptcy of creating your own god.

The argument is simple and crushing. Men take valuable materials, which God created, and pay a craftsman to fashion a deity. They then bow down to the work of their own hands and their own wallets. This manufactured god is a burden, an inert object that cannot move, speak, hear, or save. It is the ultimate exercise in futility. The point is to drive Israel, and by extension the Church, to recognize the absolute folly of exchanging the glory of the incomparable, active, and saving God for anything the world has to offer.

Outline

Context In Isaiah

This passage sits in the second major section of Isaiah (chapters 40-66), which focuses on the comfort and restoration of God's people after their exile in Babylon. A central theme of this section is the absolute sovereignty and uniqueness of Yahweh, the God of Israel, contrasted with the nothingness of the idols of the pagan nations, particularly Babylon. In chapter 45, God names Cyrus as His instrument to deliver Israel, demonstrating His control over history. Here in chapter 46, the Babylonian gods Bel and Nebo are depicted as toppling, becoming baggage for beasts of burden (46:1-2). Immediately following that image of defeated gods being hauled away, God contrasts Himself as the one who carries Israel (46:3-4). Our text (46:5-7) is the logical and polemical climax of this contrast. God is not just better than the idols; He is in an entirely different category of being. This section serves to bolster the faith of the exiles, assuring them that the God who made them is infinitely more powerful than the gods of their captors.

Key Issues

Verse by Verse Commentary

v. 5 To whom would you liken Me and make Me equal and compare Me, that we would be alike?

The Lord opens with a series of rapid-fire questions that are meant to stun and silence. This is not an invitation to a philosophical debate. It is a divine challenge that exposes the fundamental error of all false religion. The very attempt to liken God to anything is a catastrophic category mistake. He is not the supreme member of a class of beings called "gods." He is the Creator of all classes of beings. To compare Him is to diminish Him, to attempt to fit the infinite into a finite box for our own examination. The question hangs in the air because there is no possible answer. Who can you compare Him to? No one. What can you compare Him to? Nothing. All idolatry, ancient and modern, begins right here, with the arrogant assumption that we have the standing to set up a comparison. The true God is, and everything else is derivative. To compare the two is like comparing a novelist to one of his fictional characters.

v. 6 Those who lavish gold from the purse and weigh silver on the scale, they hire a goldsmith, and he makes it into a god; they fall down, indeed they worship it.

Here the prophet moves from the abstract principle to the concrete, ridiculous practice. He pulls back the curtain on the idol factory. And what do we find? Not divine mystery, but basic economics. It starts with money. The idolater lavishes gold. The word implies extravagance, a pouring out of wealth. He carefully weighs the silver, ensuring he is dedicating a significant amount to the project. This is not a cheap endeavor. Then he hires a professional, a goldsmith. The entire enterprise is a human project, funded by human wealth and executed by human skill. And the result? The craftsman "makes it into a god." The irony is thick enough to choke on. Man, the creature, makes a god. And what is the response to this man-made, expensive trinket? "They fall down, indeed they worship it." The progression is a spiral down into absurdity. You pay for the materials, you pay for the labor, and then you worship the product you just commissioned. You are bowing to an invoice. This is a perfect description of all idolatry. We pour our resources, our time, our money, our passion into something, and then we grant it ultimate authority over our lives.

v. 7 They carry it upon the shoulder and bear it; they set it in its place, and it stands there. It does not move from its place. Though one may cry to it, it cannot answer; it cannot save him from his distress.

The critique reaches its devastating conclusion. The idol, once made, is completely helpless. First, it is a burden. "They carry it upon the shoulder." Contrast this sharply with verse 4, where God says, "I will carry you." The false god weighs its worshippers down; the true God lifts His worshippers up. The idol must be transported and "set in its place." It is utterly passive. Once placed, "it stands there." It has no life, no will, no power of its own. It cannot move. You can rob the temple, and the god just sits there. You can knock it over, and it stays on the floor until its worshippers pick it back up. The final nail in the coffin is its uselessness in a crisis. A man in distress might cry out to it, but the idol is deaf and dumb. It "cannot answer." And because it cannot answer, it "cannot save." It fails the most basic test of divinity. A god that cannot save is not a god at all; it is a decoration. It is a religious paperweight. This is the end point of all idolatry: a desperate cry into a silent void, with no answer and no salvation.

The Irrationality of Idolatry

The Bible's critique of idolatry is not simply that it is wrong, but that it is profoundly stupid. It is an offense against both revelation and reason. Paul makes a similar argument in Romans 1, where he states that men "exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man" (Rom. 1:23). They suppress the truth of the Creator that is evident in creation and turn to worship the creature instead. Isaiah's approach here is satirical. He wants his hearers to see the sheer foolishness of their actions. Think about it:

This irrationality is a function of sin. Sin darkens the understanding (Eph. 4:18). When we turn away from the true God, we do not become rational secularists; we become worshippers of the absurd. We will bow down to anything, no matter how illogical, rather than bow down to the sovereign Lord of heaven and earth.

Application

It is easy for us, as modern Christians, to read a passage like this and thank God that we don't have little golden statues in our homes. But we miss the point entirely if we do that. Idolatry is not primarily about statues; it is about the heart. An idol is anything that we look to for the salvation, security, and significance that only God can provide.

We still lavish gold from the purse. We pour our wealth into our careers, our homes, our portfolios, our political causes, and we look to them to save us from distress. We hire "goldsmiths", experts, gurus, influencers, politicians, to shape these things into gods for us, promising they will deliver us. We carry these idols on our shoulders. The pursuit of wealth, status, or power is a heavy burden. The anxiety of keeping up appearances, the fear of the market crashing, the weight of our political hopes, these are heavy gods to bear.

And when we are in true distress, when a doctor gives a bad report, when a child rebels, when our soul is in turmoil, we can cry out to our 401(k), to our political party, or to our social media following, and what do we get? Silence. They cannot answer. They cannot save. The only answer to idolatry is to see it for the absurd sham that it is and to turn to the one true God who is not made with hands, who is not a burden but a bearer of burdens, and who not only hears our cry but has answered it definitively in the person of His Son. Jesus Christ is the God who did move from His place, coming down from heaven to save us from our real distress, which is our sin.