12. Or you can give the book to someone who cannot read and tell that person to read it. That person will say, “I cannot read the book because I don’t know how to read.”
13. The Lord says, “These people come to honor me with words, but I am not really important to them. The worship they give me is nothing but human rules they have memorized.
14. So I will continue to amaze them by doing powerful and amazing things. Their wise men will lose their wisdom. Even the most intelligent among them will not be able to understand.”
15. Look at them! They try to hide things from the Lord. They think he will not understand. They do their evil things in darkness. They tell themselves: “No one can see us. No one will know who we are.”
16. You turn things upside down. You think the clay is equal to the potter. You think that something that is made can tell the one who made it, “You did not make me!” This is like a pot telling its maker, “You know nothing.”
17. This is the truth: After a very short time, Lebanon will become rich farmland, and the farmland will be like thick forests.