Charles Spurgeon Commentary Isaiah 1:3

"The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master`s crib; [but] Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider." — Isaiah 1:3 (ASV)

The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib: but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider.

Men are more brutish than the beasts that perish. The lower animals, as men contemptuously call them, acknowledge the hand that feeds them; but men receive the bounty of God through long years, and yet live as if there were no God at all, and feel no gratitude to him whatsoever. Israel was God's peculiar people, highly favored, and greatly indulged, and this made it all the worse for the Lord to be able to contrast them and the brute creation: The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib: but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider.

The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib: but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider.

See how the Lord still owns the children of Israel as his people, though he contrasts their conduct with the behavior of the ox and the ass. So we see that, however far God's people may have gone into sin, they are his people still, and he does not deny their relationship to him: Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider.