Loading…

We Become What We Worship: A Biblical Theology of Idolatry is unavailable, but you can change that!

The heart of the biblical understanding of idolatry, argues Gregory Beale, is that we take on the characteristics of what we worship. Employing Isaiah 6 as his interpretive lens, Beale demonstrates that this understanding of idolatry permeates the whole canon, from Genesis to Revelation. Beale concludes with an application of the biblical notion of idolatry to the challenges of contemporary...

who make and worship idols will become like those very idols: “Those who make them will be like them, everyone who trusts in them” (Ps 115:8; cf. Ps 135:18). Hence, the reader of the psalm is to deduce that worshipers of idols will be judged by being made to resemble the idols portrayed in Psalm 115:5–7, that is, through “having eyes but not seeing” and so forth. Part of the implication of the psalm is that Israel is to “bless” and “revere” the Lord and not the nations’ idols (Ps 135:19–21), lest
Page 46