⁶ In the morning sow your seed, and at evening do not let your hands be idle, for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good.^(A)

¹⁰ He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness.^{[a] 11} You will be enriched in every way for your great generosity, which will produce thanksgiving to God through us,

⁶ You have sown much and harvested little; you eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill; you clothe yourselves, but no one is warm; and you that earn wages earn wages to put them into a bag with holes.^(A)

⁷ “Thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider how you have fared. ⁸ Go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house, so that I may take pleasure in it and be honored, says the Lord.^{(B) 9} You have looked for much, but it came to little, and when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why? says the Lord of hosts. Because my house lies in ruins, while all of you hurry off to your own houses.^{(C) 10} Therefore the heavens above you have withheld the dew, and the earth has withheld its produce.^{(D) 11} And I have called for a drought^[a] on the land and the hills, on the grain, the new wine, the oil, on what the soil produces, on humans and animals, and on all their labors.”^(E)