8. “Should a person rob God? But you are robbing me.“You ask, ‘How have we robbed you?’“You have robbed me in your offerings and the tenth of your crops.
9. So a curse is on you, because the whole nation has robbed me.
10. Bring to the storehouse a full tenth of what you earn so there will be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the Lord All-Powerful. “I will open the windows of heaven for you and pour out all the blessings you need.
11. I will stop the insects so they won’t eat your crops. The grapes won’t fall from your vines before they are ready to pick,” says the Lord All-Powerful.
12. “All the nations will call you blessed, because you will have a pleasant country,” says the Lord All-Powerful.
13. The Lord says, “You have said terrible things about me.“But you ask, ‘What have we said about you?’
14. “You have said, ‘It is useless to serve God. It did no good to obey his laws and to show the Lord All-Powerful that we were sorry for what we did.
15. So we say that proud people are happy. Evil people succeed. They challenge God and get away with it.’ ”
16. Then those who honored the Lord spoke with each other, and the Lord listened and heard them. The names of those who honored the Lord and respected him were written in his presence in a book to be remembered.