¹⁸ Now the food made ready for one day was one ox and six fat sheep, as well as fowls; and once in ten days a store of all sorts of wine: but all the same, I did not take the food to which the ruler had a right, because the people were crushed under a hard yoke.

²² And the amount of Solomon's food for one day was thirty measures of crushed grain and sixty measures of meal;

²³ Ten fat oxen and twenty oxen from the fields, and a hundred sheep, in addition to harts and gazelles and roes and fat fowls.

¹⁴ Now from the time when I was made ruler of the people in the land of Judah, from the twentieth year till the thirty-second year of Artaxerxes the king, for twelve years, I and my servants have never taken the food which was the right of the ruler.

¹⁵ But earlier rulers who were before me made the people responsible for their upkeep, and took from them bread and wine at the rate of forty shekels of silver; and even their servants were lords over the people: but I did not do so, because of the fear of God.

²¹ The sinner takes money and does not give it back; but the upright man has mercy, and gives to others.

²⁶ All the day he is ready to have mercy and to give; his children are a blessing.