John Calvin Commentary Isaiah 37:18

"Of a truth, Jehovah, the kings of Assyria have laid waste all the countries, and their land," — Isaiah 37:18 (ASV)

and 19. Truly, O LORD. Here Hezekiah begins to distinguish between the false gods and the true God, which we also should do very carefully. Wicked men, who have no light, indulge in some confused imaginations about God, which quickly pass away, so that they think that there is no God, or care nothing about Him. But God does not wish that His people should be moved by a slight and passing opinion, but that He should be acknowledged by them as the true God, who drives away all superstitions by the brightness of His power.

It is not enough, therefore, that we believe in something which pagans imagine to be a deity, but we must believe in God in such a manner as to distinguish Him from pretended gods, and to separate truth from falsehood. Indeed, when He has once shone into our hearts, those false religions which formerly occupied our minds immediately give way.

This doctrine should be held all the more carefully, because many persons rest satisfied with dark speculations, and think that it is enough if they acknowledge some deity. They evidently do not know whether they should worship the God of the Muslims or of the Jews, and fly in the air, so that, as the saying is, they neither touch heaven nor earth. Nothing can be more destructive than this imagination, for it mingles and confounds idols with God, whose majesty does not hold its due rank if it does not reign in solitary grandeur over the ruins of all the false gods. Thus, the beginning of true piety is that from the whole multitude of false gods we should wisely distinguish that one God to whom we should be entirely devoted.

For they are not gods, but the work of the hands of man, wood and stone. By two arguments Hezekiah shows that “they were not gods;” first, because they consisted of matter, and secondly, because they were formed by the hands of men.

Nothing can be more absurd than for a man to assume the right to create a god, not only because man had a beginning while God is eternal, but also because man does not subsist by his own power even for a single moment. Let the whole world collect all its strength into a single man; he will not even be able to create a fig. What presumption is it, therefore, that every mortal man should make for himself either one god or many! Since, therefore, there is nothing in us but what is frail and fading, we will never be able to produce a deity.

Besides, it is in the highest degree absurd to attempt, as an exercise of skill, to frame some deity out of matter which is corruptible and devoid of feeling, as if “wood or stone,” whenever it received a shape, began to be a god. In this manner, therefore, all the superstitions that men have ever invented are speedily overturned, for the existence of those gods can be found nowhere but in their own brains; indeed, all that they themselves have contrived is condemned as empty and false.