John Calvin Commentary Isaiah 44:10

"Who hath fashioned a god, or molten an image that is profitable for nothing?" — Isaiah 44:10 (ASV)

Who is the maker of God? He pours ridicule on the madness of men who dare to frame gods; for it is a shocking and detestable thing that men should take so much upon themselves as to create God. Every person will certainly greatly abhor such madness; and yet men are blindly impelled by foolish passion to manufacture gods, and no warning restrains them.

On the other hand, they will say that this never entered into anyone’s mind, and that injustice is done to them when they are accused of such great madness, just as the Papists today say that we slander them when we use these arguments of the Prophet against them.

But they rely in vain on their sophistical reasonings to avoid this charge. What the Prophet says is most true: that they are so mad as to think that they “make God.” For as soon as the stone or wood has been carved or polished, they ascribe divinity to it, run to it, make prayers, call upon it, prostrate themselves before it, and, in short, ascribe to it those things which they know belong to God alone.

Which is profitable for nothing. We should carefully observe this clause, which condemns as vain and useless all the images by which God is represented. It follows from this not only that God is insulted when His glory is changed into dead images, but also that all who procure idols for themselves waste their efforts and suffer loss.

Papists allege that images are the books of the unlearned, but this is a paltry evasion, for the Prophet testifies that they are of no use whatever. Let them, therefore, either erase this proof from the Book of Isaiah or acknowledge that images are vain and useless. Formerly, he expressed something more when he affirmed that nothing can be learned from them but falsehood. But on this subject we have said enough in the exposition of these passages (Isaiah 40 and 41).