The third biblical principle declares that this stewardship is attended by grave temptations. For a hasty reading the New Testament judgment will seem like a reversal of the Old Testament judgment. The ancient record often traces a relation between piety and prosperity. Jacob's proposal at Bethel reads like a bargain struck in the market place. The book of Job was meant to correct this error and to drive from the world those needless suspicions that would be directed against the sick and the poor. In the vigorous debate with his friends the patriarch declines to plead guilty to the charge that his bodily ills and property losses are the results of his sins. But although the commercial value of piety may often be found among Old Testament motives, still there is a constant offset. The period of plenty is described as accompanied by a "leanness of soul." The deeper insight of the psalmist saw the end of the man "who made not God his strength, but trusted in the abundance of his riches." Then there stood before him the perplexing sight of prosperous wickedness, the bad man spreading himself as the green bay tree and having everything that heart could wish. Slowly the artificial nexus that had been fashioned between piety and prosperity and wickedness and misfortune was broken, and men began to seek for the different types of reward in their own fields. More stress was laid upon the methods by which wealth was gained, and more upon its charitable uses. The prophets came to thunder against a false outer prosperity and to give their advance hints of the wealth of the kingdom of God.