Key Verse Spotlight
Wisdom 14:19 - Meaning and Application
Understand how this verse speaks to what you're facing and how to apply it today
Translation: World English Bible — Catholic Edition
" for he, wishing perhaps to please his ruler, used his art to force the likeness toward a greater beauty. "
Wisdom 14:19
Verse in Context
Understanding the surrounding verses prevents misinterpretation:
17 And when men could not honor them in presence because they lived far off, imagining the likeness from afar, they made a visible image of the king whom they honored, that by their zeal they might flatter the absent as if present.
18 But worship was raised to a yet higher pitch, even by those who didn’t know him, urged forward by the ambition of the architect;
19 for he, wishing perhaps to please his ruler, used his art to force the likeness toward a greater beauty.
20 So the multitude, allured by reason of the grace of his handiwork, now consider an object of devotion him that a little before was honored as a man.
21 And this became an ambush, because men, in bondage either to calamity or to tyranny, invested stones and stocks with the Name that shouldn’t be shared.
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Wisdom 14:1
"Again, one preparing to sail, and about to journey over raging waves, calls upon a piece of wood more fragile than the vessel that carries him."
Wisdom 14:2
"For the hunger for profit planned it, and wisdom was the craftsman who built it."
Wisdom 14:3
"Your providence, O Father, guides it along, because even in the sea you gave a way, and in the waves a sure path,"
Wisdom 14:4
"showing that you can save out of every danger, that even a man without skill may put to sea."
Wisdom 14:5
"It is your will that the works of your wisdom should not be ineffective. Therefore men also entrust their lives to a little piece of wood, and passing through the surge on a raft come safely to land."
Wisdom 14:6
"For in the old time also, when proud giants were perishing, the hope of the world, taking refuge on a raft, your hand guided the seed of generations of the race of men."
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