Labor: General Scriptures Concerning
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Genesis 3:19
By the sweat of your brow you will eat your bread, until you return to the ground—because out of it were you taken. For dust you are, and to dust you shall return.”
Exodus 20:9–11
Six days you shall labor and do all your work, / but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God, on which you must not do any work—neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant or livestock, nor the foreigner within your gates. / For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them, but on the seventh day He rested. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy.
Exodus 23:12
For six days you are to do your work, but on the seventh day you must cease, so that your ox and your donkey may rest and the son of your maidservant may be refreshed, as well as the foreign resident.
Exodus 34:21
Six days you shall labor, but on the seventh day you shall rest; even in the seasons of plowing and harvesting, you must rest.
Leviticus 19:13
You must not defraud your neighbor or rob him. You must not withhold until morning the wages due a hired hand.
Deuteronomy 24:14, 15
Do not oppress a hired hand who is poor and needy, whether he is a brother or a foreigner residing in one of your towns. / You are to pay his wages each day before sunset, because he is poor and depends on them. Otherwise he may cry out to the LORD against you, and you will be guilty of sin.
Deuteronomy 25:4
Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.
Ecclesiastes 5:12
The sleep of the worker is sweet, whether he eats little or much, but the abundance of the rich man permits him no sleep.
Jeremiah 22:13
“Woe to him who builds his palace by unrighteousness, and his upper rooms without justice, who makes his countrymen serve without pay, and fails to pay their wages,
Malachi 3:5
“Then I will draw near to you for judgment. And I will be a swift witness against sorcerers and adulterers and perjurers, against oppressors of the widowed and fatherless, and against those who defraud laborers of their wages and deny justice to the foreigner but do not fear Me,” says the LORD of Hosts.
Matthew 20:1–15
“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. / He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard. / About the third hour he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing.
Luke 10:7
Stay at the same house, eating and drinking whatever you are offered. For the worker is worthy of his wages. Do not move around from house to house.
Acts 20:35
In everything, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words of the Lord Jesus Himself: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”
1 Corinthians 9:9
For it is written in the Law of Moses: “Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.” Is it about oxen that God is concerned?
Ephesians 4:28
He who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing good with his own hands, that he may have something to share with the one in need.
1 Thessalonians 4:11, 12
and to aspire to live quietly, to attend to your own matters, and to work with your own hands, as we instructed you. / Then you will behave properly toward outsiders, without being dependent on anyone.
2 Thessalonians 3:7–13
For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us, because we were not undisciplined among you, / nor did we eat anyone’s food without paying for it. Instead, in labor and toil, we worked night and day so that we would not be a burden to any of you. / Not that we lack this right, but we wanted to offer ourselves as an example for you to imitate.
1 Timothy 5:18
For the Scripture says, “Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain,” and, “The worker is worthy of his wages.”
James 5:4
Look, the wages you withheld from the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of Hosts.