Baruch — Chapter 6

And when you shall see in Babylon a multitude adoring them, say you in your hearts: thou oughtest to be adored, O Lord. The right response to witnessing idolatry: interior adoration of the true God. Lapide: the Christian surrounded by false worship must maintain interior worship and, when possible, bear witness by refusal to participate.

As a vessel that a man useth is worth nothing when it is broken: even so are their gods, when they are set up in their temples. The idol as a broken vessel: once cracked or fallen, it is thrown away — proving it has no real divinity. A divine being cannot be damaged, sold, looted, or replaced. Lapide cites numerous historical examples of idols being looted and destroyed, none of which ever defended itself.

Women with cords about them, sit in the ways, burning bran for perfume: but if any of them, drawn by some passenger, sleep with him, she upbraideth her neighbour, that she was not thought as worthy as herself, and was not girt with a cord as she was. The temple prostitutes of Babylon — one of the most vivid descriptions of pagan degradation in the canonical books. Lapide gives a careful anthropological treatment: the custom of Babylon's sacred prostitution (documented by Herodotus, Strabo) as the extreme of religious degradation. Applied as a warning against confusing sacred and profane love.

For fire sent from the Chaldeans burning the house of their gods, they themselves fly away, and escape from the midst of them, but the gods remain in the fire as beams. When the idols' own temples burn, the priests flee to save themselves — the idols do nothing. Lapide: the ultimate test of divinity is the ability to protect oneself and one's worshippers; the idols fail spectacularly.

They cannot verify their own promise: let them not be taken for gods. The idol cannot fulfill a vow made to it, cannot give an oracle, cannot communicate in any way — the test of divine personality. Lapide: the living God speaks, fulfills promises, and communicates personally through prophecy, Scripture, and grace; the idols are definitively mute.

For fire, and wind, and swift air, and the circle of stars, and great water, and the sun and moon, are good, if one think that they are gods, they will obey him not. Even the natural elements are better servants of God than the idols are servants of their worshippers: at least fire warms, water refreshes, wind blows — but idols do nothing at all. Lapide: the 'worship' of natural forces (Stoic pantheism) is at least partially comprehensible; the worship of man-made statues is utterly irrational.

By what reason therefore is it to be thought, or to be said, that they are gods? The rhetorical conclusion of the Epistle: no rational ground exists for calling idols gods. Lapide summarizes the eight arguments of the Epistle against idolatry: (1) material nature, (2) craftsmanship, (3) shameful treatment, (4) need for guards, (5) fear of thieves, (6) impotence, (7) helplessness in fire, (8) uselessness in agriculture and judgment. The Epistle serves as the model for all subsequent Christian apologetics against polytheism.