Lack of Knowledge

This sentence was said to the clergy.

Half of it goes on posters: My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. The rest is rarely printed underneath. 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 thou is singular. Three verses on: like people, like priest.

So it does not say what it is generally made to say. Nothing in the chapter concerns a shortage of copies or teachers. It concerns men who had the law, held the office, and put the knowledge down.

Nor is the knowledge in question information. Hear how the chapter opens. There is no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land, and the evidence for that verdict is conduct: By swearing, and lying, and killing, and stealing, and committing adultery, they break out, and blood toucheth blood. Knowing God is measured by what the country does after dark. Malachi describes the office as it should run: For the priest's lips should keep knowledge.

And the religion had not stopped. The sacrifices were still going and the priests were living off them: They eat up the sin of my people. Two chapters on, God says which he wanted more. For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.

Hosea puts the promise to those same people in weather language. 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. What was put down is still being handed out, as reliably as a season, to anyone who follows on.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 121 is Life and Light (John 1:4).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna, Year Two