Isaiah 44:9

Are all of them vanity; hereby discover themselves to be vain, empty, or foolish men. Or thus, They that make graven images, all of them make (which word may fitly be repeated out of the foregoing clause, as is very usual in Scripture) a vanity, or a thing of nought. Which translation seems better to agree,

1. With the following clause, which is added to explain this, in which, not the idol-makers, but the idols themselves, are said to be vain or unprofitable.

2. With the use of the Hebrew word in Scripture, which is never applied to persons, but constantly to things, and sometimes to idols, as 1 Samuel 12:21. Their delectable things; their idols, in the sight and worship of which they take so much pleasure. They are their own witnesses; they that make them are witnesses against themselves, and against their idols, because they very well know that they are not gods, but the work of their own hands, in which there is nothing but mean matter and man's art. They see not, nor know; or, that they (to wit, their idols) do not see nor know, have neither sense nor understanding. That they may be ashamed; therefore they have just cause to be ashamed of their folly and stupidity, in worshipping such senseless things.