²⁵ But in the fifth year you may eat its fruit. In this way your harvest will be increased. I am the Lord your God.

⁹ “You expected much, but see, it turned out to be little.^(A) What you brought home, I blew^(B) away. Why?” declares the Lord Almighty. “Because of my house, which remains a ruin,^(C) while each of you is busy with your own house. ¹⁰ Therefore, because of you the heavens have withheld^(D) their dew^(E) and the earth its crops.^{(F) 11} I called for a drought^(G) on the fields and the mountains,^(H) on the grain, the new wine,^(I) the olive oil^(J) and everything else the ground produces, on people and livestock, and on all the labor of your hands.^(K)”

⁸ “Will a mere mortal rob^(A) God? Yet you rob me.

“But you ask, ‘How are we robbing you?’

“In tithes^(B) and offerings. ⁹ You are under a curse^(C)—your whole nation—because you are robbing me. ¹⁰ Bring the whole tithe^(D) into the storehouse,^(E) that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates^(F) of heaven and pour out^(G) so much blessing^(H) that there will not be room enough to store it.^(I)

¹⁸ ‘From this day on, from this twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, give careful thought^(A) to the day when the foundation^(B) of the Lord’s temple was laid. Give careful thought: ¹⁹ Is there yet any seed left in the barn? Until now, the vine and the fig tree, the pomegranate^(C) and the olive tree have not borne fruit.^(D)

“‘From this day on I will bless^(E) you.’”

⁴ “Is it a time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses,^(A) while this house remains a ruin?^(B)”

⁵ Now this is what the Lord Almighty says: “Give careful thought^(C) to your ways. ⁶ You have planted much, but harvested little.^(D) You eat, but never have enough.^(E) You drink, but never have your fill.^(F) You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages,^(G) only to put them in a purse with holes in it.”