This is what the LORD of Armies says: *Consider your ways.
For it is precept on precept, precept on precept; line on line, line on line; here a little, there a little.
Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the LORD.
Now therefore this is what the LORD of Armies says: Consider your ways.
You have sown much, and bring in little. You eat, but you don't have enough. You drink, but you aren't filled with drink. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm, and he who earns wages earns wages to put them into a bag with holes in it.*
Go up to the mountain, bring wood, and build the house. I will take pleasure in it, and I will be glorified,* says the LORD.
Now, please consider from this day and backward, before a stone was laid on a stone in the temple of the LORD.
Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you, to me indeed is not tiresome, but for you it is safe.