– Cult dedicated to idols. These are images that represent some deity as if they were itself. In the OT there was an intense work for the Israelites to worship the only God. More than once, however, they were unfaithful to Yahweh:
Ex 20,3-4 : You will have no other gods before me. You shall not make sculpture for yourself or any figure.
Ex 32,1-35 : Let’s go: make us a god who goes before us.
Judg 2,11-12 : The Israelites then did evil in the eyes of the Lord and served Baal.
1Kings 12:28 : No more pilgrimages to Jerusalem! Here, O Israel, is your God, who brought you out of Egypt.
2Kings 17,7-18 : They worshiped other gods.
Jer 32,28-35 : They built altars to Baal in the valley of Ben-Enon, to burn their sons and daughters there in honor of Moloch.
Ez 8,10 : I saw […] unclean animals and, painted around the wall, all the idols of the house of Israel.
Ez 16,1-63 : Son of Man, show Jerusalem her abominable crimes.
Ez 20,1-44 : Let each one cast out the abominable idols […]; defile yourselves no more with the idols of Egypt.
Ez 23,1-49 : This is what they did to me: they dishonored my sanctuary and profaned my sabbaths.
Dan 14,3-4 : Now, the Babylonians had an idol called Bel, whose daily cost was twelve artabs of flour.
Hos 8:5 : I reject your (golden) calf, O Samaria! My anger flared against them.
Hos 13 :2 : Now the Israelites sin even more, they make for themselves statues cast from their silver, idols of their invention.
– Several psalms and the book of Wisdom condemn this practice:
Ps 30 : 7 : You hate those who worship vain idols. I, however, trust in the Lord.
Ps 80:10 : Let there not be a strange god among you; nor ever worship the god of another people.
Ps 96,7 : Those who worship statues and glory in their idols are ashamed; for the gods prostrate themselves before the Lord.
Ps 105,19-20.34-37 : They made a golden calf at the foot of Horeb, and worshiped an idol of molten gold.
Ps 113,12-13 : As for their idols of gold and silver, they are mere works of men’s hands.
Wis 11:15 : To punish them for the mad thoughts of their perversity, which made them go astray in the worship of creeping things.
Wis 12: 1-2.24 : That is why you gently chasten those who fall, and warn them by showing them how they sin.
Wis 13,1-2.10-19 : All those who did not know God and […] did not know how to know who he is are foolish by nature.
Wis 14,8-9 : But cursed is the idol, both he and his maker; this one because he formed it, that one because […] it bears the name of god.
Wis 15,7-13 : Here, then, is a potter who laboriously kneads the soft earth, and forms various objects for our use.
– And several prophets:
Is 40,19-20 : A craftsman melts a statue, the goldsmith, the gold plate, and melts the silver chains.
Is 41,6-7 : They say to each other: “Courage!”. The smelter encourages the goldsmith, and the hammer the blacksmith.
Is 44,9-20 : Idol makers are nothing and their precious works are worthless.
Jr 2,5 : What injustice in me did your fathers find to turn away from me.
Jr 10,3-9.14-15 : Because the gods of these peoples are only vanity. They are stumps felled in the forest
Jr 18.15 : Yet my people have forgotten me! He incenses chimerical idols, which make him stumble along the way.
Jr 51,17-18 : The maker of the statue he fashioned is ashamed, because the idols he cast are nothing but lies.
Br 4,7 : You had exasperated your Creator, offering sacrifices to demons and not to God.
Br 6 : It is because of the sins you committed against God that you are deported to Babylon.
Zech 13 : In that day, declares the Lord, I will cut off even the names of idols from the earth: they will no longer be spoken of.
– Also in the NT idolatry is censured:
Rom 1,24-32 : God gave them up in the desires of their hearts […] so that they dishonored their bodies among themselves.
1Cor 5,11 : Do not have intercourse with anyone who is called a brother and is impure, covetous, an idolater.
1Cor 10,7-14.20 : Do not become idolaters, like some of them.
Col 3,5 : Mortify therefore your members in what is earthly: licentiousness, impurity […] which is idolatry.
Jn 2:16 : He said to those who sold the doves: “Take this away from here and do not make my Father’s house a house of merchants”.
Rev 13 :8 : All the inhabitants of the earth, whose names have not been written from the origin of the world, will adore her.
Rev 19:20 : But the Beast was captured, and with him the false prophet, who had performed wonders under his control.
