Jeremiah 10:4

“They deck it with silver and with gold, etc.] Cover it with plates of silver and gold, for the sake of ornament, that it may look grand, majestic, and venerable; and by this means draw the eye and attention, and so the devotion of people to it: they fasten it with nails and hammers, that it move not. The sense is, either that the idol was fastened to some post or pillar, or in some certain place on a pedestal, that it might not fall, it not being able otherwise to support itself; or the plates of silver and gold, as Kimchi thinks, were fastened to the idol with nails and hammers, that so they might not be taken away from it; for, were it not for the nails, the god would not be able to keep…”

“fasten . . . move not--that is, that it may stand upright without risk of falling, which the god (!) would do, if left to itself (Isa 41:7).”

“They deck it - It was covered with plates of gold and silver, and then fastened with nails in its place, that it might not “more, i. e.” tumble down. The agreement in this and the following verses with the argument in Isa. 40–44 is so manifest, that no one can doubt that the one is modelled upon the other. If, therefore, Jeremiah took the thoughts and phrases from Isaiah, it is plain that the last 27 chapters of Isaiah were prior in date to Jeremiah’s time, and were not therefore written at the close of the Babylonian exile. This passage then is a crucial one to the pseudo-Isaiah theory. Two answers are attempted, (1) that the pseudo-Isaiah borrowed from Jeremiah. But this is refuted by the…”

“10:4 The carved image possessed no beauty or value of its own. Humans had to apply gold and silver to make it look impressive (see 10:9). Similarly, the image had no strength to stand by itself. It had to be secured to a foundation with hammer and nails.”

“deck: Psa 115:4, Psa 135:15; Isa 40:19, Isa 40:20 fasten: Isa 41:6, Isa 44:12, Isa 46:7 Jeremiah 10:5”