Likewise, you extort from some of them a vessel of wheat for the household,
because there are many people in it—twenty-five matia from some, one artaba from others—
under the pretext of bathing in the baths,
while they weep, “We do not want to bathe.
We have no bread to eat.
Something like this is not our concern,
when our children are hungry and naked!”
And most of them testify, “We do not bathe in baths.”
Are they not the very ones who perform forced labor on them until they build them—
and on the other buildings for which you make them perform forced labor?
Or are the villages also estate workers’ settlements?
You did not build their houses in them, did you?
And these same afflictions are how you oppress them: through your forced labor, your foul wine, all your hardships, and your acts of violence.
O you people whom that voice threatens: “As for those who act out of strife and disobey the truth, but obey unrighteousness—there will be wrath and anger, affliction and crushing upon every human soul that works evil.”