your infants, your wives, and the foreigners living in your encampment, those who chop wood and those who carry water –

Then our sons will be like plants, that quickly grow to full size. Our daughters will be like corner pillars, carved like those in a palace.

Egypt will run away, hissing like a snake, as the enemy comes marching up in force. They will come against her with axes as if they were woodsmen chopping down trees.

The leaders then added, “Let them live.” So they became woodcutters and water carriers for the whole community, as the leaders had decided.

Now you are condemned to perpetual servitude as woodcutters and water carriers for the house of my God.”

and that day made them woodcutters and water carriers for the community and for the altar of the Lord at the divinely chosen site. (They continue in that capacity to this very day.)

Suppose he goes with someone else to the forest to cut wood and when he raises the ax to cut the tree, the ax head flies loose from the handle and strikes his fellow worker so hard that he dies. The person responsible may then flee to one of these cities to save himself.

Look, I will pay your servants who cut the timber 20,000 kors of ground wheat, 20,000 kors of barley, 120,000 gallons of wine, and 120,000 gallons of olive oil.”

They will not need to take wood from the field or cut down trees from the forests, because they will make fires with the weapons. They will take the loot from those who looted them and seize the plunder of those who plundered them, declares the sovereign Lord.