Religious ignorance.
"My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, 1 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." These words suggest three things in relation to religious ignorance.
I. IT IS DESTRUCTIVE. "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge." Ignorance is not the mother of devotion, it is the mother of destruction.
1. What does it destroy? The growth of the soul in power, beauty, and fruitfulness.
2. How does it destroy? How can the lack of a thing destroy? How can nothing do mischief? The lack of heat and moisture will kill the vegetable kingdom; the lack of air will cause the extinction of all animal life. The soul without knowledge of God is like a plant without heat and moisture; an animal without the salubrious breeze.
II. IT IS WILLFUL. "Because thou hast rejected knowledge." There is no culpability in a man being ignorant of some things. He may not have the means, the time, or the faculty for the particular attainment. Not so with the knowledge of God; it comes to him whether he will or not. It comes to him in the objects of nature; it comes to him in the necessary deductions of his reason; it comes to him in the intuitions of his moral nature. Besides, in some cases, as with the Israelites, it comes to man by special revelation. He rejects it. Ignorance of God is ever more a criminal ignorance. "For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse."
III. IT IS GOD-OFFENDING. "I will also reject thee." It is not unnatural or unphilosophic to suppose that the condition of the man ignoring his existence must be to the last degree offensive to him. Hence he deals out retribution.
1. To themselves. "I will also reject thee," etc.
2. To their children. "I will also forget thy children." It is a Divine law springing from the constitution of society, that the iniquities of the fathers shall be visited on their children. Parents cannot do wrong without injuring their offspring.—D.T.