3
but your watchful guidance, Father, pilots the ship. You made a way in the sea, a sure path through strong waves.
4
You have shown us that you can rescue us from anything, so that even those who have no skill can put out to sea.
5
Your will is that the works of your wisdom be fruitful. This is the only reason in the end why humans can entrust their lives to cheap pieces of wood and can reach land safely by riding the breaking surf on a ship that is no more than a raft.
6
Near the beginning, at a time when proud giants were being destroyed, the hope of the world escaped on just such a raft. This was how the genetic character of a new generation survived for the world to come. They were steered the whole way by your hand.
7
Praised be the wood by means of which it has now become possible for us to do what is right!
8
But idols made by human hands are cursed, as are those who make them. Those who make them are cursed because they make them. The idols are cursed because, though made of corruptible material, people call them gods.
9
Both are equally hateful to God: the godless craftsmen and the products of their godlessness.
10
The thing that has been produced will be punished along with the one who produced it.
11
Therefore, God will come in judgment on the nation's idols, for they have turned a part of God's creation into something that God hates. They have produced stumbling blocks for the well-being of humans, a trap set to spring when the feet of the foolish step on it.
12
The very notion of idols was the beginning of immoral sexual activity. The invention of idols ruined human life.
13
In the beginning, idols didn't exist, and they won't last forever.