I have a vague recollection of making a scarecrow when I was very young. Its proportions and fashion accessories now elude my memory, but I do remember setting up the little guardian to watch over my newly planted vegetable patch. I was reminded of such wooden-wardens when passing a local school, where two scarecrows, about human size, guard the garden beds. Just how good a job they do, might only be revealed by interviewing the local crows.

The prophet Jeremiah used the image to take a mocking swipe at Israel’s idols. He likened them to ‘scarecrows in a cucumber field’ – his point being that the idols and the scarecrows shared the same abilities of speech and movement and auditory power. His mockery was meant to shake Israel from its fixation with false gods, but it seems the people to whom he prophesied lacked the powers of comprehension. (‘Those who worship them become like them.’)

In light of Jeremiah’s association, I now have to confess that I have indeed made a scarecrow or two in my life. Only two? John Calvin once lamented that the human heart is a veritable factory of idols. And can I deny it? Every time that anything or anyone takes preeminence in my heart, there the idol is. And while crows may be repelled by it, heaven’s judgement is drawn to it, to the danger of both idol and idolater. Which is ample reason why, when it comes to idols, this old crow ought to stay well away.