Psalm 135:18

They that make them are like unto them: so is every one that trusteth in them.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

135:15-21 These verses arm believers against idolatry and all false worship, by showing what sort of gods the heathen worshipped. And the more deplorable the condition of the Gentile nations that worship idols, the more are we to be thankful that we know better. Let us pity, and pray for, and seek to benefit benighted heathens and deluded sinners. Let us endeavour to glorify his name, and recommend his truth, not only with our lips, but by holy lives, copying the example of Christ's goodness and truth.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

The idols of the heathen are silver and gold ... - To show more fully the propriety of praising God, and him alone as God, the psalmist instituted a comparison between him and idols, showing that the gods worshipped by the pagan lacked every ground of claim to divine worship and homage. They were, after all that could be done to fashion, to decorate, and to adorn them, nothing but silver and gold, and could have no better claim to worship than silver and gold as such. They had, indeed, mouths, eyes, ears, but they could neither speak, see, hear, nor breathe. The passage here is substantially the same as in Psalm 115:4-8; and the one was evidently copied from the other, though in the latter the description is in some respects amplified; but which was the original it is impossible to determine. See the notes at that passage.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

18. are like unto them—or, "shall be like," &c. Idolaters become spiritually stupid and perish with their idols (Isa 1:31).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

No text from Poole on this verse.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

They that make them are like unto them,.... Are as blind, stupid, and senseless as they; or "let them that make them", &c. (q); so some versions and interpreters; See Gill on Psalm 115:8;

so is everyone that trusteth in them; alike ignorant and sottish: and so are all such that set up idols and lusts in their own hearts, and serve them; or trust to their own righteousness; even all unregenerate and self-righteous persons: they cannot speak a word for God and his grace, for Christ and his righteousness, for the Spirit of God, and his work upon their hearts, of all which they are ignorant; they are blind and have no sight and sense of their sin and misery, and of their need of Christ and his righteousness; they are deaf to his Gospel, and the charming voice of it; they are lifeless and breathless, are dead in trespasses and sins, and have no pantings and desires after spiritual things.

(q) So V. L. Pagninus, Montanus, Tigurine version, Sept. Syr. Arab. Ethiop.

Geneva Study Bible

They that make them are like unto them: so is every one that trusteth in them.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

18. Like unto them shall their makers become,

Even everyone that trusteth in them.

Psalm 135:18

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

For the good of His proved church He ever proves Himself to be the Living God, whereas idols and idol-worshippers are vain - throughout following Psalm 115:4-8, but with some abridgments. Here only the אף used as a particle recalls what is said there of the organ of smell (אף) of the idols that smells not, just as the רוּח which is here (as in Jeremiah 10:14) denied to the idols recalls the הריח denied to them there. It is to be rendered: also there is not a being of breath, i.e., there is no breath at all, not a trace thereof, in their mouth. It is different in 1 Samuel 21:9, where אין ישׁ (not אין) is meant to be equivalent to the Aramaic אין אית, num (an) est; אין is North-Palestinian, and equivalent to the interrogatory אם (after which the Targum renders אלּוּ אית).