“For my people are foolish; they do not know me; they are stupid children; they have no understanding. They are skilled in doing evil but do not know how to do good.”
When its boughs are dry, they are broken; women come and make a fire of them. For this is a people without understanding; therefore he who made them will not have compassion on them; he who formed them will show them no favor.
The priests did not say, “Where is the Lord?” Those who handle the law did not know me; the rulers transgressed against me; the prophets prophesied by Baal and went after things that do not profit.
O that I had in the desert a traveler’s lodging place, that I might leave my people and go away from them! For they are all adulterers, a band of traitors.
They bend their tongues like bows; they have grown strong in the land for falsehood and not for truth, for they proceed from evil to evil, and they do not know me, says the Lord.
They all deceive their neighbors, and no one speaks the truth; they have taught their tongues to speak lies; they commit iniquity and are too weary to repent.
Hear the word of the Lord, O people of Israel, for the Lord has an indictment against the inhabitants of the land. There is no faithfulness or loyalty and no knowledge of God in the land.
My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge! Because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me; and since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children.
And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly, for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.