Behold, ye are of nothing, and your work of naught: an abomination is he that {s} chooseth you.

(s) So that a man cannot make an idol, without doing that which God detests and abhors for he chooses his own devises and forsakes the Lords.

Wesley's Notes

41:24 Your work - Your operations are like your beings: there is no reality in your beings, nor efficacy in your actions.

King James Translators' Notes

of nothing: or, worse than nothing

of nought: or, worse than of a viper

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

24. of nothing-(See on [782]Isa 40:17). The Hebrew text is here corrupt; so English Version treats it.

abomination-abstract for concrete: not merely abominable, but the essence of whatever is so (De 18:12).

chooseth you-as an object of worship.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

41:21-29 There needs no more to show the folly of sin, than to bring to notice the reasons given in defence of it. There is nothing in idols worthy of regard. They are less than nothing, and worse than nothing. Let the advocates of other doctrines than that of salvation through Christ, bring their arguments. Can they tell of a cure for human depravity? Jehovah has power which cannot be withstood; this he will make appear. But the certain knowledge of the future must be only with Jehovah, who fulfils his own plans. All prophecies, except those of the Bible, have been uncertain. In the work of redemption the Lord showed himself much more than in the release of the Jews from Babylon. The good tidings the Lord will send in the gospel, is a mystery hid from ages and generations. A Deliverer is raised up for us, of nobler name and greater power than the deliverer of the captive Jews. May we be numbered among his obedient servants and faithful friends.