12, 13. Why can man not craft any image worthy of worship?

¹² Can physical matter somehow acquire holiness because it has been crafted to become something to be worshiped? Isaiah reminds us that making an image is just a human endeavor. The tools and techniques of an image maker are the same as those used by any other artisan:

As for the wood carver, he has stretched out the measuring line; he traces it out with red chalk; he works it up with a wood scraper; and with a compass he keeps tracing it out, and gradually he makes it like the representation of a man, like the beauty of mankind, to sit in a house.”​—Isaiah 44:12, 13.

The image he makes may look like a man. It may even be beautiful. But it is lifeless. Images are in no way divine. Further, no carved image has ever ‘fallen from heaven,’ as if its source were anything more than mortal man.​—Acts 19:35.