The body of the idol is wood, and outwardly it is decorated with silver and gold and costly apparel; but the whole and every part of it is the work of man. _Silver plate_ (lit. _beaten out_) _from Tarshish_--from far away Tartessus in Spain--_is brought, and gold from Uphaz_ (Dan. x. 5), _the work of the smith, and of the hands of the founder_--who have beaten out the silver and smelted the gold: _blue and purple is their clothing_ (Ex. xxvi. 31, xxviii. 8): _the work of the wise_--of skilled artists (Isa. xl. 20)--_is every part of them_. Possibly the verse might better be translated: _Silver to be beaten out_--argentum malleo diducendum--_which is brought from Tarshish, and gold_ which is brought _from Uphaz_, are _the work of the smith and of the hands of the smelter; the blue and purple_ which are _their clothing_, are _the work of the wise all of them_. At all events, the point of the verse seems to be that, whether you look at the inside or the outside of the idol, his heart of wood or his casing of gold and silver and his gorgeous robes, the whole and every bit of him as he stands before you is a manufactured article, the work of men's hands. The supernatural comes in nowhere. In sharpest contrast with this lifeless fetish, _Iahvah is a God that is truth_, _i.e._, a true God (cf. Prov. xxii. 21), or _Iahvah is God in truth_--is really God--_He is a_ _living God, and an eternal King_; the sovereign whose rule is independent of the vicissitudes of time, and the caprices of temporal creatures: _at His wrath the earth quaketh, and nations cannot abide His indignation_: the world of nature and the world of man are alike dependent upon His Will, and He exhibits His power and his righteous anger in the disturbances of the one and the disasters of the other. According to the Hebrew punctuation, we should rather translate: _But Iahvah Elohim_ (the designation of God in the second account of creation, Gen. ii. 4-iii. 24) _is truth_, _i.e._, reality; as opposed to the falsity and nothingness of the idols; or _permanence, lastingness_ (Ps. xix. 10), as opposed to their transitoriness (vv. 11-15).