Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands. They have mouths, but they don’t speak. They have eyes, but they don’t see. They have ears, but they don’t hear. They have noses, but they don’t smell. They have hands, but they don’t feel. They have feet, but they don’t walk, neither do they speak through their throat. Those who make them will be like them; yes, everyone who trusts in them.
⛓ Read Psalm 115 forward — the whole chapter and its afterlife →Where this passage surfaces again, sorted by the strength of the link. Each kind of reuse — formal quotation, deliberate allusion, faint echo, figural pattern — carries its own mark. Follow any reference to read it in place.
Allusion5
A deliberate verbal borrowing without a citation formula.
The classic idol-polemic — idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands, that cannot see, speak, or act — underwrites Paul's "no idol is anything in the world." Psalm 115 reduces idols to nothing, exactly Paul's premise. The chapter's whole "food sacrificed to idols" logic rests on this conviction of idols' non-existence; high coherence and recurrence with the Isaianic polemic.
High confidence'You turned to God from idols' draws on the satire of manufactured idols (silver and gold, the work of human hands, with mouths that cannot speak) versus the living God. The turning-from-idols-to-serve-God movement is the Psalm's polemic inverted into conversion language; high coherence and strong Septuagintal availability.
High confidenceTheir idols are silver and gold, the work of men's hands; those who make them become like them. The silver-shrine trade and the made-with-hands charge directly invoke this psalm's idol-satire. Strong coherence and recurrence (paired with Ps 135).
High confidenceThe mockery of idols that are the work of men's hands, who 'have eyes... but they see not,' underlies John's antithesis between the true God and idols. The closing warning assumes the psalmist's verdict on idols as dead and powerless. The 'true God and eternal life' is the living antithesis to lifeless images.
Medium confidenceThe darkened, senseless idolaters who 'become like' their lifeless idols stand behind the 'darkened understanding... callous' Gentiles. Volume is moderate; the psalm's logic (worship of vain idols deadens the worshipper) coheres exactly with Paul's diagnosis. A staple availability text for Jewish anti-pagan rhetoric.
Medium confidenceEcho1
A fainter, low-volume reuse, carried by recurrence or thematic coherence.
The lifeless 'idols' that provoke Paul evoke the classic psalm of handmade gods of silver and gold that cannot see or hear; recurrence of this polemic across the Psalter is high.
Medium confidence◇ Figural1
A typological pattern re-read in a later text — no verbal quotation, high figural coherence.
The crowd cries 'The gods have come down to us in the likeness of men' and the priest of Zeus prepares oxen and garlands (vv11-13). The psalm's mockery of idols 'the work of men's hands' frames the scene's irony: the living agents of God are taken for the lifeless gods of the nations. Volume nil (no verbal contact); the link is typological-thematic, exposing pagan idolatry. Contested as an intended echo.
Low confidence