Jeremiah 51:18 Meaning They Are Vanity

Asāra: Without core Asāra names a thing with no heartwood in it. Vanity here means hollow rather than proud: the image is poured, plated, and dressed, and the goldsmith who shaped it knows exactly how far the metal goes and that nothing lives behind it. Lean any weight on it and it gives, the way a beam eaten out by termites holds up a roof until the day it does not.

Moha: Delusion Moha is confusion about what is in front of you. Hands did the casting, and confusion supplied the design, so the finished thing is delusion made portable, something you can dress and carry through the streets on a festival day. It works the way a coat hung on a door in a dark room becomes a standing person until someone turns on the light.

Saṅkhāra: Things put together Saṅkhāra covers whatever has been assembled out of parts. Ore, fire, mold, hammer, and cloth were brought together into an image, and anything brought together that way comes apart on the same terms, splitting first at the seam where it was joined. Babylon's gods arrived by the same road as her walls and her granaries, and they will leave by it.

Vipāka: The ripening of deeds Vipāka is the fruit an action bears when its time comes. The time of their visitation is a season, and fruit hangs green on the branch for months, then comes down when it is ripe, whatever anyone does to hurry it. Standing gods and unshaken empires settle nothing about the harvest; they mean only that the day has not yet arrived.

Anicca: Impermanence Anicca is the passing of everything that has arisen. Perishing was written into the casting: the metal came out of a furnace and goes back into one, melted down for coin or for the next city's gods. The thing set up to outlast the people bowing to it turns out to be one more object on its way out, only slower.