Anvil

The anvil appears in a passage in Isaiah that describes craftsmen at work producing an idol. The image captures the collaborative labor of metal-working in the service of a manufactured image.

Idol-Making and the Anvil

Isaiah 41 depicts the absurdity of idol production as nations rally around their gods in fear. Verse 7 describes the craftsmen encouraging one another in their work: "So the carpenter encourages the goldsmith, [and] he who smoothes with the hammer him who strikes the anvil, saying of the soldering, It is good; and he fastens it with nails, that it should not be moved" (Isa 41:7). The anvil here is part of a chain of human craft — hammer-work, soldering, nailing — all aimed at producing an object that must be fixed in place to keep from falling over. The irony runs through the whole passage: the god that cannot move without being nailed down is the product of the very workers who encourage each other in making it.