Anyone can see that even the wise die, as well as the foolish and stupid. They all leave their riches to their descendants.

This is something a fool cannot know; someone who is stupid cannot understand:

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

The LORD says, "My people are stupid; they don't know me. They are like foolish children; they have no understanding. They are experts at doing what is evil, but failures at doing what is good."

Then I thought, "These are only the poor and ignorant. They behave foolishly; they don't know what their God requires, what the LORD wants them to do.

All of them are stupid and foolish. What can they learn from wooden idols?

I answered, "Our leaders are stupid; they do not ask the LORD for guidance. This is why they have failed, and our people have been scattered.

But, LORD, you know me; you see what I do and how I love you. Drag these evil people away like sheep to be butchered; guard them until it is time for them to be slaughtered.

You will feel my anger when I turn it loose on you like a blazing fire. And I will hand you over to brutal men, experts at destruction.

But these people attack with insults anything they do not understand; and those things that they know by instinct, like wild animals, are the very things that destroy them.

They promise them freedom while they themselves are slaves of destructive habits---for we are slaves of anything that has conquered us.

In this way he has given us the very great and precious gifts he promised, so that by means of these gifts you may escape from the destructive lust that is in the world, and may come to share the divine nature.

Wicked people bring about their own downfall by their evil deeds, but good people are protected by their integrity.

Again Jesus said to them, "I will go away; you will look for me, but you will die in your sins. You cannot go where I am going."

If you plant in the field of your natural desires, from it you will gather the harvest of death; if you plant in the field of the Spirit, from the Spirit you will gather the harvest of eternal life.