And when the builders put in position the base of the Temple of the Lord, the priests, dressed in their robes, took their places with horns, and the Levites, the sons of Asaph, with brass instruments, to give praise to the Lord in the way ordered by David, king of Israel.
And corded instruments and wind-instruments and wine are in their feasts: but they give no thought to the work of the Lord, and they are not interested in what his hands are doing.
He who is wise will see these things; he who has good sense will have knowledge of them. For the ways of the Lord are straight, and the upright will go in them, but sinners will be falling in them.
How, when anyone came to a store of twenty measures, there were only ten: when anyone went to the wine-store to get fifty vessels full, there were only twenty.
And now, give thought; looking on from this day, from the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, from the time when the base of the Lord's house was put in its place, give thought to it.
For before those days there was no payment for a man's work, or for the use of a beast, and there was no peace for him who went out or him who came in, because of the attacker: for I had every man turned against his neighbour.