Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 121 · May 1
Lack of Knowledge
“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 will also forget thy children.”
Hosea spoke this sentence to the priests of Israel.
Half of it is often printed on posters: "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge." The rest is rarely printed underneath it: "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 will also forget thy children." The word "thou" there is singular, and it is spoken to a priest. Three verses later the chapter says, "like people, like priest."
So the verse does not say what people usually make it say. Nothing in the chapter complains about too few Bibles or too few teachers. It is about men who had God's law in their hands, held the office of priest, and set the knowledge of God aside.
The knowledge Hosea means is also more than facts. Listen to how the chapter opens: "there is no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land." The evidence for that verdict is the way people were living: "By swearing, and lying, and killing, and stealing, and committing adultery, they break out, and blood toucheth blood." In Hosea, knowing God shows up in how a country lives after dark. Malachi describes the priest's job as it should be done: "For the priest's lips should keep knowledge."
Meanwhile the religion had not stopped. The sacrifices were still being offered, and the priests were living off them: "They eat up the sin of my people." Two chapters later God says which of the two He wanted more: "For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings."
Earlier in the book the people speak words of return in the language of weather: "Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the LORD: his going forth is prepared as the morning; and he shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter and former rain unto the earth." God's answer shows those words were spoken too lightly, yet He gives His own promise later in the book: "I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely." The priests had put down the knowledge of God, but God had not stopped giving it. He still comes as surely as the morning and as faithfully as the rain in its season, to anyone who keeps following on to know Him.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 121 is Life and Light (John 1:4).