The body of the idol is wood, and outwardly it is decorated with silver and gold and costly apparel; but the whole and every part of it is the work of man. _Silver plate_ (lit. _beaten out_) _from Tarshish_--from far away Tartessus in Spain--_is brought, and gold from Uphaz_ (Dan. x. 5), _the work of the smith, and of the hands of the founder_--who have beaten out the silver and smelted the gold: _blue and purple is their clothing_ (Ex. xxvi. 31, xxviii. 8): _the work of the wise_--of skilled artists (Isa. xl. 20)--_is every part of them_. Possibly the verse might better be translated: _Silver to be beaten out_--argentum malleo diducendum--_which is brought from Tarshish, and gold_ which is brought _from Uphaz_, are _the work of the smith and of the hands of the smelter; the blue and purple_ which are _their clothing_, are _the work of the wise all of them_. At all events, the point of the verse seems to be that, whether you look at the inside or the outside of the idol, his heart of wood or his casing of gold and silver and his gorgeous robes, the whole and every bit of him as he stands before you is a manufactured article, the work of men's hands. The supernatural comes in nowhere. In sharpest contrast with this lifeless fetish, _Iahvah is a God that is truth_, _i.e._, a true God (cf. Prov. xxii. 21), or _Iahvah is God in truth_--is really God--_He is a_ _living God, and an eternal King_; the sovereign whose rule is independent of the vicissitudes of time, and the caprices of temporal creatures: _at His wrath the earth quaketh, and nations cannot abide His indignation_: the world of nature and the world of man are alike dependent upon His Will, and He exhibits His power and his righteous anger in the disturbances of the one and the disasters of the other.
According to the Hebrew punctuation, we should rather translate: _But Iahvah Elohim_ (the designation of God in the second account of creation, Gen. ii. 4-iii. 24) _is truth_, _i.e._, reality; as opposed to the falsity and nothingness of the idols; or _permanence, lastingness_ (Ps. xix. 10), as opposed to their transitoriness (vv. 11-15).
The statement of the tenth verse respecting the eternal power and godhead of Iahvah is confirmed in the twelfth and thirteenth by instances of His creative energy and continual activity as exhibited in the world of nature. _The Maker of the earth by His power, Establishing the habitable world by His wisdom, And by His insight He did stretch out the heavens: At the sound of His giving voice_ (Ps. lxxvii. 18; _i.e._, thundering) _there is an uproar of waters in the heavens, And He causeth the vapours to rise from the end of the earth; Lightnings for the rain He maketh, And causeth the wind to go forth out of His treasuries._ There is no break in the sense between these sentences and the tenth verse. The construction resembles that of Amos v. 8, ix. 5, 6, and is interrupted by the eleventh verse, which in all probability was, to begin with, a marginal annotation.
The solid earth is itself a natural symbol of strength and stability. The original creation of this mighty and enduring structure argues the omnipotence of the Creator; while the "establishing" or "founding" of it upon the waters of the great deep is a proof of supreme wisdom (Ps. xxiv. 2; cxxxvi. 6), and the "spreading out" of the visible heavens or atmosphere like a vast canopy or tent over the earth (Ps. civ. 2; Isa. xl. 22), is evidence of a perfect insight into the conditions essential to the existence and wellbeing of man.
It is, of course, clear enough that physical facts and phenomena are here described in popular language as they appear to the eye, and by no means with the severe precision of a scientific treatise. It is not to be supposed that this prophet knew more about the actual constitution of the physical universe than the wise men of his time could impart. But such knowledge was not necessary to the enforcement of the spiritual truths which it was his mission to proclaim; and the fact that his brief oracle presents those truths in a garb which we can only regard as poetical, and which it would argue a want of judgment to treat as scientific prose, does not affect their eternal validity, nor at all impair their universal importance. The passage refers us to God as the ultimate source of the world of nature. It teaches us that the stability of things is a reflexion of His eternal being; that the persistence of matter is an embodiment of His strength; that the indestructibility which science ascribes to the materials of the physical universe is the seal which authenticates their Divine original. Persistence, permanence, indestructibleness, are properly sole attributes of the eternal Creator, which He communicates to His creation. Things are indestructible as regards man, not as regards the Author of their being.