Trypho answered: We will remember this interpretation of yours also, if you establish this question by other arguments as well. But at the present moment take up the subject again, and prove to us that the existence of another God besides the Maker of the universe is recognized by the spirit of the prophets, taking care in your argument not to name the sun and the moon, which God is stated in Scripture to have allowed the Gentiles to worship as gods. And the Prophets, misusing, as it were, this passage, often say: Thy God is God of gods and Lord of lords, adding repeatedly the epithets, great and mighty and terrible.Deuteronomy 10:17
For these words are not used as though they were really gods, but the word is teaching us, as it were, that He who is God in reality, who made all things, alone is Lord of those that are considered gods and lords. For that the Holy Spirit might bring this home also, He said by holy David: The gods of the Gentiles — though considered gods — are images of demons, but are not gods. And He lays a curse on them that make and worship them.
I replied: These were not the proofs that I was about to adduce, Trypho, by which I am aware that those who worship these and similar objects are condemned, but rather such as no one will be able to contradict. Yet they will seem to be strange to you, though you read them daily, so that you can understand also from this that God, because of your iniquity, hid from you the ability to perceive the wisdom that there is in His words — with the exception of them to whom, after the grace of His abundant kindness, He left, as Isaiah said, a seed for salvation, in order that your race should not perish completely, like the men of Sodom and Gomorrah. Pay attention therefore to the words which I am about to call to mind from the holy Scriptures, which do not require to be explained at all, but only to be heard.