For the customs of the people are vain,.... Or, "their decrees", or "statutes" o, their determinations and conclusions, founded upon the observation of the stars; or, their "rites and ceremonies" p in religion, in the worship of the sun and moon, and the hosts of heaven. The Syriac version is, "the idols of the people are nothing"; and which appears by what follows:
for one cutteth a tree out of the forest (the work of the hands of the workman) with the axe; not for building, or for burning, but to make a god of; the vanity, stupidity, and folly of which are manifest, when it is considered that the original of it is a tree that grew in the forest; the matter and substance of it the body and trunk of a tree cut down with an axe, and then hewed with the same, and planed with a plane, and formed into the image of a man, or of some creature; and now, to fall down and worship this must be vanity and madness to the last degree; see
o חקות "decreta", Targ.; "statua", Junius Tremellius, Piscator, Cocceius, Schmidt. p Ritus, Vatablus "ceremoniae", Tigurine version.