John Calvin Commentary Psalms 115:8

"They that make them shall be like unto them; Yea, every one that trusteth in them." — Psalms 115:8 (ASV)

Those who make them shall be like them. Many are of the opinion that this is a curse, and therefore translate the future tense in the optative mood, may they become like them. However, it would be equally appropriate to regard it as the language of ridicule, as if the prophet affirms that the idolaters are as stupid as the stocks and stones themselves.

And he deservedly and severely reprimands people naturally endowed with understanding, because they strip themselves of reason and judgment, and even of common sense. For do not those who ask for life from lifeless things endeavor with all their might to extinguish all the light of reason?

In short, if they possessed even a particle of common sense, they would not attribute the properties of deity to the works of their own hands, to which they could impart no sensation or motion. And surely this consideration alone should suffice to remove the plea of ignorance: that they make false gods for themselves in opposition to the plain dictates of natural reason.

As a legitimate consequence of this, they are willfully blind, envelop themselves in darkness, and become stupid; and this makes them completely inexcusable, so that they cannot pretend that their error is the result of pious zeal. And I have no doubt that it was the prophet’s intention to remove every cause and semblance of ignorance, since humankind spontaneously becomes stupid.

Whoever trusts in them. The reason God holds images in such abhorrence appears very plainly from this: He cannot endure that the worship due to Him should be taken from Him and given to them. That the world should acknowledge Him as the sole author of salvation, and should ask for and expect from Him alone all that is needed, is an honor that uniquely belongs to Him.

And therefore, whenever confidence is placed in any other than in Him, He is deprived of the worship that is due to Him, and His majesty is, as it were, annihilated. The prophet denounces this profanity, just as in many passages the indignation of God is compared to jealousy, when He sees idols and false gods receiving the homage of which He has been deprived (Exodus 34:14; Deuteronomy 5:9). If someone carves an image of marble, wood, or brass, or casts one of gold or silver, this in itself would not be such a detestable thing; but when people attempt to attach God to their inventions, and to make Him, as it were, descend from heaven, then a pure fiction is substituted in His place.

It is very true that God’s glory is instantly counterfeited when it is clothed in a corruptible form (as He exclaims through Isaiah 40:25 and 46:5, To whom have you likened Me? and the Scripture abounds with such texts); nevertheless, He is doubly injured when His truth, grace, and power are imagined to be concentrated in idols.

Making idols and then confiding in them are things that are almost inseparable. Otherwise, why else does the world so strongly desire gods of stone, wood, clay, or any earthly material, if not because they believe that God is far from them, until they hold Him fixed to them by some bond?

Averse to seeking God in a spiritual manner, they therefore pull Him down from His throne and place Him under inanimate things. Thus it happens that they address their prayers to images, because they imagine that in idols God’s ears, as well as His eyes and hands, are near them.

I have observed that these two vices can hardly be separated, namely, that those who, in forging idols, change the truth of God into a lie, must also ascribe some divinity to them. When the prophet says that unbelievers put their trust in idols, his purpose, as I previously noted, was to condemn this as the chief and most detestable act of profanity.