Therefore my people are gone into captivity, for lack of knowledge: and their honourable men are famished, and their multitude are parched with thirst.
In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away unto Assyria, and placed them in Halah, and in Habor, on the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.
Your country is desolate; your cities are burned with fire; your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers.
When the boughs thereof are withered, they shall be broken off; the women shall come, and set them on fire: for it is a people of no understanding; therefore he that made them will not have compassion upon them, and he that formed them will shew them no favour.
For, behold, the Lord, the LORD of hosts, doth take away from Jerusalem and from Judah stay and staff, the whole stay of bread, and the whole stay of water;
And none calleth to mind, neither is there knowledge nor understanding to say, I have burned part of it in the fire; yea, also I have baked bread upon the coals thereof; I have roasted flesh and eaten it: and shall I make the residue thereof an abomination? shall I fall down to the stock of a tree?
Then shalt thou say in thine heart, Who hath begotten me these, seeing I have been bereaved of my children, and am solitary, an exile, and wandering to and fro? and who hath brought up these? Behold, I was left alone; these, where were they?
Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD Behold, my servants shall eat, but ye shall be hungry: behold, my servants shall drink, but ye shall be thirsty: behold, my servants shall rejoice, but ye shall be ashamed:
If I go forth into the field, then behold the slain with the sword! and if I enter into the city, then behold them that are sick with famine! for both the prophet and the priest go about in the land and have no knowledge.
And their nobles send their little ones to the waters: they come to the pits, and find no water; they return with their vessels empty: they are ashamed and confounded, and cover their heads.
Yea, the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times; and the turtle and the swallow and the crane observe the time of their coming; but my people know not the ordinance of the LORD.
They that be slain with the sword are better than they that be slain with hunger; for these pine away, stricken through, for want of the fruits of the field.
My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I also will forget thy children.
and shall dash thee to the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.