1. Am I not free? Am I not an emissary? Have I not seen Yeshua our Lord? Are you not my work in the Lord?
2. If to others I am not an emissary, at least I am to you—for you are the seal of my office of emissary in the Lord.
3. My defense to those who examine me is this.
4. Don’t we have the right to food and drink?
5. Don’t we have the right to take along a believing wife, as do the other emissaries and the Lord’s brothers and Kefa?
6. Or is it only Barnabas and I who have no right to not work?
7. What soldier ever serves at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat its fruit? Or who tends a flock and does not drink its milk?
8. I don’t say these things merely as a man, do I? Doesn’t Torah also say these things?
9. For it is written in the Torah of Moses, “You shall not muzzle an ox while it is threshing.” Is it the oxen that concern God,
10. or is He speaking entirely for our sake? Yes, it was written for our sake, because the one plowing ought to plow in hope and the one threshing in hope of a share in the crop.
11. If we sowed spiritual things into you, is it too much if we reap material things from you?