Proverbs 17:16

17:16 Of what use is money in the hand of a fool,

since he has no intention of acquiring wisdom?

Isaiah 28:9-13

28:9 Who is the Lord trying to teach?

To whom is he explaining a message?

Those just weaned from milk!

Those just taken from their mother’s breast!

28:10 Indeed, they will hear meaningless gibberish,

senseless babbling,

a syllable here, a syllable there.

28:11 For with mocking lips and a foreign tongue

he will speak to these people.

28:12 In the past he said to them,

“This is where security can be found.

Provide security for the one who is exhausted!

This is where rest can be found.”

But they refused to listen.

28:13 So the Lord’s word to them will sound like

meaningless gibberish,

senseless babbling,

a syllable here, a syllable there.

As a result, they will fall on their backsides when they try to walk,

and be injured, ensnared, and captured.

Isaiah 29:11-12

29:11 To you this entire prophetic revelation is like words in a sealed scroll. When they hand it to one who can read and say, “Read this,” he responds, “I can’t, because it is sealed.” 29:12 Or when they hand the scroll to one who can’t read and say, “Read this,” he says, “I can’t read.”

Jeremiah 5:3-5

5:3 Lord, I know you look for faithfulness.

But even when you punish these people, they feel no remorse.

Even when you nearly destroy them, they refuse to be corrected.

They have become as hardheaded as a rock.

They refuse to change their ways.

5:4 I thought, “Surely it is only the ignorant poor who act this way.

They act like fools because they do not know what the Lord demands.

They do not know what their God requires of them.

5:5 I will go to the leaders

and speak with them.

Surely they know what the Lord demands.

Surely they know what their God requires of them.”

Yet all of them, too, have rejected his authority

and refuse to submit to him.