“Consider your ways. Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes.... Ye looked for much, and, lo, it came to little; and when ye brought it home, I did blow upon it.” “When one came to a heap of twenty measures, there were but ten; when one came to the press-fat for to draw out fifty vessels out of the press, there were but twenty.” “Why? saith the Lord of hosts. Because of Mine house that is waste.” “Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed Me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed Thee? In tithes and offerings.” “Therefore the heaven over you is stayed from dew, and the earth is stayed from her fruit.”[215] [Sidenote: _Gains That Impoverish_] “Forasmuch therefore as your treading is upon the poor, ... ye have built houses of hewn stone, but ye shall not dwell in them; ye have planted pleasant vineyards, but ye shall not drink wine of them.” “The Lord shall send upon thee cursing, vexation, and rebuke, in all that thou settest thine hand unto.” “Thy sons and thy daughters shall be given unto another, ... and thine eyes shall look, and fail with longing for them all the day long; and there shall be no might in thine hand.”[216] “He that getteth riches, and not by right, shall leave them in the midst of his days, and at his end shall be a fool.”[217] The accounts of every business, the details of every transaction, pass the scrutiny of unseen auditors, agents of Him who never compromises with injustice, never overlooks evil, never palliates wrong. [Sidenote: _The Audit_] “If thou seest the oppression of the poor, and violent perverting of judgment and justice, ... marvel not at the matter; for He that is higher than the highest regardeth.” “There is no darkness, nor shadow of death, where the workers of iniquity may hide themselves.”[218] “They set their mouth against the heavens, and ... say, How doth God know? and is there knowledge in the Most High?” “These things hast thou done,” God says, “and I kept silence; thou thoughtest that I was altogether such a one as thyself; but I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes.”[219] * * * * * [Sidenote: _A Witness Never Silenced_] “I turned, and lifted up mine eyes, and looked, and behold a flying roll.... This is the curse that goeth forth over the face of the whole earth; for every one that stealeth shall be cut off as on this side according to it; and every one that sweareth shall be cut off as on that side according to it. I will bring it forth, saith the Lord of hosts, and it shall enter into the house of the thief, and into the house of him that sweareth falsely by My name; and it shall remain in the midst of his house, and shall consume it with the timber thereof and the stones thereof.”[220]