Psalms 135:15–18

Psalm 135:15–18 delivers a devastating polemic against idol worship: the gods of the nations are mere human artifacts — silver and gold, mute, deaf, and powerless. The passage climaxes with one of Scripture's most sobering spiritual axioms: those who fashion and trust in idols become like them — spiritually inert, unable to speak truth, unable to hear God. For Catholic readers, this is not an ancient curiosity but a perennial warning about the deformative power of whatever we place at the center of our worship.

Verse 15 — "The idols of the nations are silver and gold" The Psalmist opens with a declaration that is simultaneously factual and ironic. The idols ('ăṣabbê haggôyîm) of the surrounding nations — Canaanite Baals, Egyptian animal-gods, Mesopotamian astral deities — are not dismissed as nonexistent forces but as things: precious metals shaped by human hands. The specification of "silver and gold" is deliberate. These are the most valued materials in the ancient world, and yet their very costliness underscores the absurdity: humanity takes what is most precious and creates from it something that cannot do what even the humblest living creature can do. The word "nations" (gôyîm) places these verses in the context of Israel's ongoing identity as a people set apart. Their God acts; the gods of the nations simply are — static objects.

Verse 16 — "They have mouths, but they can't speak" The anatomical catalogue of deficiencies begins. A mouth is the organ of communication, command, promise, and blessing. The God of Israel speaks — creation itself is the product of divine speech (Genesis 1). The idols, by contrast, possess the form of a mouth without the function. The Hebrew verb yědabbērû (they speak) is negated absolutely — not "they speak poorly" but "there is no speech in them." This echoes the great idol polemic of Isaiah 44, where the prophet mocks the craftsman who uses half a log to warm himself and the other half to carve a god he then prostrates before. The idol's silence is the silence of the void.

Verse 17 — "They have ears, but they can't hear" The idol cannot hear prayer — which means, functionally, it cannot be in relationship. Biblical faith is covenantal and dialogical; Israel cries out and God hears (šāmaʿ). The Shema itself (Deuteronomy 6:4) — "Hear, O Israel" — presupposes a God who hears because He is Living. The idol's ear is anatomically present but spiritually null. The verse continues in the full Psalm with "neither is there any breath in their mouths," reinforcing the ruach-less quality of the idol — it has no spirit, no animating divine breath.

Verse 18 — "Those who make them will be like them" This is the theological and pastoral apex of the entire passage. The Hebrew yihyû (they will become/be) describes not a punishment imposed from outside but an organic spiritual consequence. The maker of an idol conforms to the idol. To fashion a mute god is to gradually lose the capacity for genuine speech — for testimony, prophecy, and prayer. To worship a deaf god is to become deaf to the Word of God. St. Augustine's principle — like rejoices in like — captures the dynamic: we become what we love. This verse is not merely a taunt; it is a theological anthropology. The human being is a worshipping creature (), and the object of worship shapes the worshipper in its own image. The terrifying inversion here is that whereas God creates humans in image (Genesis 1:27), the idol-maker reverses the order — crafting a god in the human image, and then being re-formed in the image of that dead thing.

Catholic tradition uniquely illuminates this passage at several levels. First, the Catechism of the Catholic Church (§2112–2114) teaches that idolatry "consists in divinizing what is not God" and that it "perverts our innate sense of God." Far from confining the danger to carved statues, the Catechism explicitly names "power, pleasure, race, ancestors, the state, money" as modern idols — a direct echo of the Psalm's logic that precious materials (silver and gold) can become spiritually ruinous.

Second, St. Augustine in De Civitate Dei (Book VIII) develops the Psalm's insight into a philosophy of history: civilizations built on false gods are built on ontological emptiness and must inevitably collapse into the likeness of their idols — morally inert, unjust, unresponsive to truth.

Third, St. John of the Cross (Ascent of Mount Carmel, Book I) draws on precisely this Psalm-tradition to warn that inordinate attachment to any created good — even beautiful religious objects — can function as an idol that numbs the soul's capacity to receive God. The "mouth that cannot speak" becomes the soul that has lost the gift of contemplative prayer.

Fourth, the Second Council of Nicaea (787 AD), which defined the veneration of sacred images, is careful to distinguish latreia (worship due to God alone) from proskynesis (veneration of icons). The Council explicitly cites the idol-polemic of the Psalms to show that true Christian iconography is the opposite of idolatry: icons of Christ and the saints are windows to the living God precisely because the prototype is alive and personal. The idol is mute because no living reality stands behind it; Christ the Image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15) speaks eternally.

A contemporary Catholic might be tempted to read this passage as comfortably irrelevant — we do not bow before golden statues. But Psalm 135:18 issues a precise diagnosis for modern spiritual malaise: we become like whatever receives our ultimate devotion. The person who organizes their entire life around financial security and spends hours each day managing portfolios while prayer shrinks to seconds gradually loses the capacity to hear God speak in silence — they become, spiritually, as deaf as the idol. The Catholic who consumes social media's algorithmically curated outrage as a primary lens on reality risks becoming as mute as the idol — unable to speak words of genuine mercy or truth, only to react.

The practical application: perform a regular examination of conscience not only about sins committed but about what you are becoming. What do you think about most? What do you sacrifice most for? What disappoints you most deeply? The answers reveal your functional god. Then ask: is prayer becoming more alive or more rote? Is Scripture more intelligible or more opaque? Spiritual numbness is rarely the result of one dramatic apostasy; it is the slow likeness that forms when we feed daily on things that cannot hear us back.