Bible Verses About Labor: General references

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.

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.

“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.

‘You also go into my vineyard,’ he said, ‘and I will pay you whatever is right.’

So they went. He went out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour and did the same thing.

About the eleventh hour he went out and found still others standing around. ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’ he asked.

‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered. So he told them, ‘You also go into my vineyard.’

When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, starting with the last ones hired and moving on to the first.’

The workers who were hired about the eleventh hour came and each received a denarius.

So when the original workers came, they assumed they would receive more. But each of them also received a denarius.

On receiving their pay, they began to grumble against the landowner.

‘These men who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden and the scorching heat of the day.’

But he answered one of them, ‘Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Did you not agree with me on one denarius?

Take your pay and go. I want to give this last man the same as I gave you.

Do I not have the right to do as I please with what is mine? Or are you envious because I am generous?’

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.

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.