Bible Strands
Romans 1:23
and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images of mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — Paul, writing to the church in Rome, identifies the Gentile world as the subject: those who knew God and deliberately rejected him (Romans 1:21–23). The verse sits at the pivot between their self-declared wisdom (v. 22) and God's judicial response (v. 24).
The words — ἤλλαξαν (ēllaxan), "they exchanged," is a commercial term for a trade or swap, implying a deliberate transaction rather than a passive drift. The object of that trade is τὴν δόξαν τοῦ ἀφθάρτου θεοῦ, "the glory of the immortal God," set against images of things that die.
The thread — The same exchange pattern appears in Psalms 106:20 (glory for a grass-eating ox) and Jeremiah 2:11 (glory for the "useless"). Acts 17:29 reverses the logic: offspring of God should not imagine the Divine as carved stone.
Why it lands — The verse names a specific act: a trade in which the trader gives up the higher thing for the lower and calls it wisdom. It asks the reader to check whether their own worship has been a transaction that moved the object downward.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Greek words
King James Version
And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.
Cross-references
- Psalms 106:20 They exchanged their Glory for the image of a grass-eating ox.
- Jeremiah 2:11 Has a nation ever changed its gods? (Yet they are not gods at all.) But My people have exchanged their Glory for useless idols.
- Acts 17:29 Therefore, being offspring of God, we should not think that the Divine Being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by man’s skill and imagination.
- 1 Peter 4:3 For you have spent enough time in the past carrying out the same desires as the Gentiles: living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing, and detestable idolatry.
- Psalms 115:5 They have mouths, but cannot speak; they have eyes, but cannot see;
- Romans 1:25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is forever worthy of praise! Amen.
- Deuteronomy 5:8 You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in the heavens above, on the earth below, or in the waters beneath.
- Psalms 135:15 The idols of the nations are silver and gold, made by the hands of men.
- Ezekiel 8:10 So I went in and looked, and engraved all around the wall was every kind of crawling creature and detestable beast, along with all the idols of the house of Israel.
- Deuteronomy 4:15 So since you saw no form of any kind on the day the LORD spoke to you out of the fire at Horeb, be careful