The nation is taken captive and destroyed because of lack of knowledge (compare Hosea 4:6). The people are famished and thirsty because they had not turned to the Bread of Life and the Living Water (compare Amos’s famine and thirst for hearing the word of the Lord in Amos 8:11). The Lord’s people, of their own will and choice, were suffering from spiritual malnutrition. In our present world, which is virtually overflowing with knowledge—with the Internet and all the universal, sophisticated information and communication systems—we are, ironically, dying from a widespread famine of spiritual knowledge.