2. If to others I am not an emissary, I certainly am to you. For you are the seal of my office of the emissary in the Master.
3. My defence to those who examine me is this:
4. Do we not have a right to eat and drink?
5. Do we not have a right to take along a sister – a wife – as do also the other emissaries, and the brothers of the Master, and Kĕpha?
6. Or do only Barnaḇah and I have no right to refrain from working?
7. Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat of its fruit? Or who shepherds a flock and does not feed on the milk of the flock?
8. Do I say this as a man? Or does not the Torah say the same too?
9. For it has been written in the Torah of Mosheh, “You shall not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain.” Is it about oxen Elohim is concerned?
10. Or does He say it because of us all? For this was written because of us, that he who ploughs should plough in expectation, and the thresher in expectation of sharing.
11. If we have sown spiritual seed among you, is it too much if we reap material goods from you?
12. If others share authority over you, should not rather we? But we have not used this authority, but we put up with all, lest we hinder the Good News of Messiah.
13. Do you not know that those serving the Set-apart Place eat from the Set-apart Place, and those attending at the altar have their share of the offerings of the altar?
14. So also the Master instituted that those announcing the Good News should live from the Good News.
15. But I have used none of these, nor have I written this that it should be done so to me. For it would be better for me to die than that anyone should make my boasting empty.