They that make them are like unto them - Stupid; senseless; irrational. See the notes at Isaiah 44:9-20.

So is everyone that trusteth in them - People who do this show that they are destitute of all the proper attributes of reason, since such gods cannot help them. It is most strange, as it appears to us, that the worshippers of idols did not themselves see this; but this is in reality no more strange than that sinners do not see the folly of their course of sin; that people do not see the folly of worshipping no God. In fact, there is less of folly among the pagan than there is in this class of men. The worship of an idol shows at least that there is some religious tendency in the mind; some conviction that God ought to he worshipped; some aspiration after a proper object of worship; some appreciation of the true dignity and rank of man as made for worship; but what shall be said of the man who evinces no such tendency - who has no such aspiration or desire - who endeavors to extinguish in his nature all that was designed to express the idea of worship, or to lead him to God - who never starts the inquiry whether there is a God - who never prays for light, for guidance, for pardon, for a preparation for death and eternity - who never even testifies so much interest in religion as to set up an image of gold, or wood, or stone, as indicative of the fact that he is made above the brutes? There are multitudes of the pagan less stupid and foolish than people in Christian lands.

They that make them are like unto them,.... As stupid as the matter of which they are made; as sottish and as senseless as the idols themselves, see Isaiah 44:9. Aben Ezra and Kimchi interpret it as a petition, "let them that make them be like unto them"; and so the Targum, the Septuagint, Vulgate Latin, Syriac, Arabic, and Ethiopic versions: they liked not to retain God in their knowledge, let them be given up to a reprobate mind, to a mind void of all sense and judgment; and which indeed is their case, Romans 1:28.

So is everyone that trusteth in them; more especially they that worship them: for an artificer may make them for gain, and have no faith in them; but a worshipper places confidence in them. Or this clause may be explanative of the former, and be rendered, even "every one", &c. for "to make" sometimes signifies to serve and worship, Exodus 32:35.

They that make them are {f} like unto them; so is every one that trusteth in them.

(f) As much without sense as blocks and stones.

115:8 Are like them - As void of all sense or reason as their images.

8. every one that trusteth-they who trust, whether makers or not.

115:1-8 Let no opinion of our own merits have any place in our prayers or in our praises. All the good we do, is done by the power of his grace; and all the good we have, is the gift of his mere mercy, and he must have all the praise. Are we in pursuit of any mercy, and wrestling with God for it, we must take encouragement in prayer from God only. Lord, do so for us; not that we may have the credit and comfort of it, but that they mercy and truth may have the glory of it. The heathen gods are senseless things. They are the works of men's hands: the painter, the carver, the statuary, can put no life into them, therefore no sense. The psalmist hence shows the folly of the worshippers of idols.