You must be certain to tithe ¹  all the produce of your seed that comes from the field year after year.

He will demand a tenth of your seed and of the produce of your vineyards and give it to his administrators ¹  and his servants.

In the third month they began piling their contributions in heaps ¹  and finished in the seventh month.

You will come to your grave in a full age, ¹  As stacks of grain are harvested in their season.

You crown the year with your good blessings, ¹  and you leave abundance in your wake. ² 

for you live among them. ¹  You sustain the oppressed with your good blessings, O God.

Yes, the Lord will bestow his good blessings, ¹  and our land will yield ²  its crops.

The one who sows ¹  iniquity will reap trouble, and the rod of his fury ²  will end.

When the hay is removed and new grass appears, and the grass from the hills is gathered in,

A poor person ¹  who oppresses the weak is like ²  a driving rain without food. ³ 

“Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me. ¹ 

But other seeds fell on good soil and produced grain, some a hundred times as much, some sixty, and some thirty.

Now ¹  many have undertaken to compile an account ²  of the things ³  that have been fulfilled ⁴  among us,

If we sowed spiritual blessings among you, is it too much to reap material things from you?

But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.

filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God.

I do not say this because I am seeking a gift. ¹  Rather, I seek the credit that abounds to your account.

¹ This will be your confirmation that I have spoken the truth: ²  This year you will eat what grows wild, ³  and next year ⁴  what grows on its own from that. But in the third year you will plant seed and harvest crops; you will plant vines and consume their produce. ⁵ 

‘You expected a large harvest, but instead ¹  there was little, and when you brought it home it disappeared right away. ²  Why?’ asks the Lord who rules over all. ‘Because my temple remains in ruins, thanks to each of you favoring his own house! ³ 

I do not want you to be unaware, ¹  brothers and sisters, ²  that I often intended to come to you (and was prevented until now), so that I may have some fruit even among you, just as I already have among the rest of the Gentiles. ³