Matthew Poole and continuators on Jeremiah 10:3

3 For the customes of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe.

i. e. Such courses, institutions, idolatrous customes, and ceremonies as these, that many people follow, they are vain, and it is a foolish and wicked thing, that any that profess the true God, should give [illegible: 1 letter]eed to such lying vanities.

Here he annexeth their Idolatry to their Astrology, q. d. they cut down Timber to make the Images, and representations of these Stars, and Planets, that they fear and worship as Gods, either in memorial of them, when they could not see them, or else upon a superstitious conceipt, that the Stars, which they worshipped, did by some Magick Art conveigh some vertue, or spirit into these statues or images; or rather, he doth set forth the folly of the Heathen, that whereas for the matter of them, they are but a piece of Wood, a Tree out of the Forest, and as to the form of them, no other then the Carver, a sorry man, is pleased to put them into by his Axe, which I suppose is here put for any cutting tool of the Artist, whereby he shapes it, yet they are afraid of these as if they were Gods, Isa. 40.20. See on Ier. 8.2.

Marginal references: Heb. statutes, or ordinances are vanity.; Isa. 44.9.12, &c.