My people, how can you be such stupid fools? When will you ever learn?

God made our ears---can't he hear? He made our eyes---can't he see?

and so you will be carried away as prisoners. Your leaders will starve to death, and the common people will die of thirst.

The branches of the trees are withered and broken, and women gather them for firewood. Because the people have understood nothing, God their Creator will not pity them or show them any mercy.

So I will startle them with one unexpected blow after another. Those who are wise will turn out to be fools, and all their cleverness will be useless."

The maker of idols hasn't the wit or the sense to say, "Some of the wood I burned up. I baked some bread on the coals, and I roasted meat and ate it. And the rest of the wood I made into an idol. Here I am bowing down to a block of wood!"

It makes as much sense as eating ashes. His foolish ideas have so misled him that he is beyond help. He won't admit to himself that the idol he holds in his hand is not a god at all.

The LORD says, "Come together, people of the nations, all who survive the fall of the empire; present yourselves for the trial! The people who parade with their idols of wood and pray to gods that cannot save them--- those people know nothing at all!

They know God, but they do not give him the honor that belongs to him, nor do they thank him. Instead, their thoughts have become complete nonsense, and their empty minds are filled with darkness.

They say they are wise, but they are fools;

Because those people refuse to keep in mind the true knowledge about God, he has given them over to corrupted minds, so that they do the things that they should not do.

For if the gospel we preach is hidden, it is hidden only from those who are being lost.

They do not believe, because their minds have been kept in the dark by the evil god of this world. He keeps them from seeing the light shining on them, the light that comes from the Good News about the glory of Christ, who is the exact likeness of God.

In the Lord's name, then, I warn you: do not continue to live like the heathen, whose thoughts are worthless

and whose minds are in the dark. They have no part in the life that God gives, for they are completely ignorant and stubborn.

Turn your anger on the nations that do not worship you and on the people who reject you. They have killed your people; they have destroyed us completely and left our country in ruins.

Listen to this, you that trample on the needy and try to destroy the poor of the country.

yet you hate what is good and you love what is evil. You skin my people alive and tear the flesh off their bones.

You eat my people up. You strip off their skin, break their bones, and chop them up like meat for the pot.

But if you act like wild animals, hurting and harming each other, then watch out, or you will completely destroy one another.

Turn your anger on the nations that do not worship you, on the people who do not pray to you.

They think there is no need to serve God nor any advantage in praying to him.

They should have desired the joy he gives; they should have constantly prayed to him.

No one turns to you in prayer; no one goes to you for help. You have hidden yourself from us and have abandoned us because of our sins.