Destroyed for Lack of Knowledge
My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from being priest for Me; because you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children.
Today there is no lack of physical knowledge. Discovery of new information is proceeding at a prodigious rate, and it is more accessible than ever due to the Internet.
But in Hosea 4:6 God is talking about a specific kind of knowledge—the most important and rare kind today. Many today reject the knowledge of God. Some do this by rejecting all belief in Him. Others may claim to believe in Him, but neglect the Bible and, like the nation of Israel in Hosea’s day, move further from what little knowledge of God’s beneficial laws they may have had.
Adam and Eve originally rejected God’s revealed knowledge and chose for mankind the way of obtaining knowledge by personal observation and logic. The result is the chaotic confusion we see today. The Bible claims to be that true source of knowledge; the revealed Word of God that we must not reject personally if we are to obtain God’s blessings.
Without knowing how to live as God commands, people easily fall prey to the temptations to break God’s laws. Sin leads to suffering and destruction.
To avoid this destructive lack of knowledge, learn more about God’s laws in our section on “The 10 Commandments and God’s Way of Life.”
