New Revised Standard Version
and do not turn aside after useless things that cannot profit or save, for they are useless.

Contemporary English Version
Don't worship idols! They don't have any power, and they can't help you or save you when you're in trouble.

New American Bible
Do not turn aside to gods who are nothing, who cannot act and deliver. They are nothing.

Douay-Rheims Bible
And turn not aside after vain things, which shall never profit you, nor deliver you, because they are vain.

And turn not aside after vain things, which shall never profit you, nor deliver you, because they are vain.

vain things

Deuteronomy 32:21 They have provoked me with that which was no god, and have angered me with their vanities: and I will provoke them with that which is no people, and will vex them with a foolish nation.

Jeremiah 2:5,13 Thus saith the Lord: What iniquity have your fathers found in me, that they are gone far from me, and have walked after vanity, and are become vain? . . .

Jeremiah 10:8,15 They shall be all proved together to be senseless and foolish: the doctrine of their vanity is wood. . . .

Jeremiah 14:22 Are there any among the graven things of the Gentiles that can send rain? or can the heavens give showers? art not thou the Lord our God, whom we have looked for? for thou hast made all these things.

Jeremiah 16:19 O Lord, my might, and my strength, and my refuge in the day of tribulation: to thee the Gentiles shall come from the ends of the earth, and shall say: Surely our fathers have possessed lies, a vanity which hath not profited them.

Jonah 2:8 When my soul was in distress within me, I remembered the Lord: that my prayer may come to thee, unto the holy temple.

Habakkuk 2:18 What doth the graven thing avail, because the maker thereof hath graven it, a molten, and a false image? because the forger thereof hath trusted in a thing of his own forging, to make dumb idols.

1 Corinthians 8:4 But as for the meats that are sacrificed to idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world and that there is no God but one.

cannot profit

Psalm 115:4-8 The idols of the Gentiles are silver and gold, the works of the hands of men. . . .

Isaiah 41:23,24 Shew the things that are to come hereafter, and we shall know that ye are gods. Do ye also good or evil, if you can: and let us speak, and see together. . . .

Isaiah 44:9,10 The makers of idols are all of them nothing, and their best beloved things shall not profit them. They are their witnesses, that they do not see, nor understand, that they may be ashamed. . . .

Isaiah 45:20 Assemble yourselves, and come, and draw near together, ye that are saved of the Gentiles: they have no knowledge that set up the wood of their graven work, and pray to a god that cannot save.

Isaiah 46:7 You that contribute gold out of the bag, and weigh out silver in the scales: and hire a goldsmith to make a god: and they fall down and worship.

Jeremiah 10:15 They are vain things, and a ridiculous work: in the time of their visitation they shall perish.