If you make gifts to rich people or oppress the poor to get rich, you will become poor yourself.

Don't take advantage of the poor just because you can; don't take advantage of those who stand helpless in court.

If you oppress poor people, you insult the God who made them; but kindness shown to the poor is an act of worship.

When the poor speak, they have to be polite, but when the rich answer, they are rude.

The LORD says, "The people of Israel have sinned again and again, and for this I will certainly punish them. They sell into slavery honest people who cannot pay their debts, the poor who cannot repay even the price of a pair of sandals.

Listen to this, you women of Samaria, who grow fat like the well-fed cows of Bashan, who mistreat the weak, oppress the poor, and demand that your husbands keep you supplied with liquor!

You have oppressed the poor and robbed them of their grain. And so you will not live in the fine stone houses you build or drink wine from the beautiful vineyards you plant.

I know how terrible your sins are and how many crimes you have committed. You persecute good people, take bribes, and prevent the poor from getting justice in the courts.

Listen to this, you that trample on the needy and try to destroy the poor of the country.

We can sell worthless wheat at a high price. We'll find someone poor who can't pay his debts, not even the price of a pair of sandals, and we'll buy him as a slave."

But you dishonor the poor! Who are the ones who oppress you and drag you before the judges? The rich!

And now, you rich people, listen to me! Weep and wail over the miseries that are coming upon you!

You have not paid any wages to those who work in your fields. Listen to their complaints! The cries of those who gather in your crops have reached the ears of God, the Lord Almighty.

The widow of a member of a group of prophets went to Elisha and said, "Sir, my husband has died! As you know, he was a God-fearing man, but now a man he owed money to has come to take away my two sons as slaves in payment for my husband's debt."

Still others said, "We had to borrow money to pay the royal tax on our fields and vineyards.

We are of the same race as the other Jews. Aren't our children just as good as theirs? But we have to make slaves of our children. Some of our daughters have already been sold as slaves. We are helpless because our fields and vineyards have been taken away from us."

Everyone will meet the same fate---the priests and the people, slaves and masters, buyers and sellers, lenders and borrowers, rich and poor.

The servant did not have enough to pay his debt, so the king ordered him to be sold as a slave, with his wife and his children and all that he had, in order to pay the debt.