Priests and Prophets Stumble over Repeated Instruction

Priest and prophet reel, and tables are full of vomit

But they also have erred through wine, and through strong drink are out of the way; the priest and the prophet have erred through strong drink, they are swallowed up of wine, they are out of the way through strong drink; they err in vision, they stumble in judgment. For all tables are full of vomit and filthiness, so that there is no place clean.

Religious offices share the stagger. Vision and judgment fail together. The filth is not a cartoon of a people; it is leaders too intoxicated to see. Partisan use of the vomit against a whole community, while protecting one's own clergy tables, misses the woe.

They mock the baby-lesson, so the word becomes a snare in a foreign accent

Whom shall he teach knowledge? and whom shall he make to understand doctrine? them that are weaned from the milk, and drawn from the breasts. For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little: for with stammering lips and another tongue will he speak to this people. To whom he said, This is the rest wherewith ye may cause the weary to rest; and this is the refreshing: yet they would not hear.

But the word of the LORD was unto them precept upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little; that they might go, and fall backward, and be broken, and snared, and taken. Mocked elementary teaching becomes clipped commands and foreign speech, the rest they refused. The stammering tongue is judgment, not a sneer at immigrants, and not a license to hide clarity as a trick.