The word for laborer means any kind of workman, but it is common in the New Testament for agricultural workers. "The harvest indeed is plenteous, but the laborers are few" (Matt. 9:37). When the work is done, it is only simple justice for the workman to receive his pay, for the hungry mouths at home have to be filled.
In the Old Testament the cause of the workman was guarded with special care: "Thou shalt not oppress a hired servant that is poor and needy, whether he be of thy brethren, or of thy sojourners that are in thy land within thy gates: in his day thou shalt give him his hire, neither shall the sun go down upon it ... lest he cry against thee unto Jehovah, and it be sin unto thee" (Deut. 24:14 f.). See also Malachi 3:5: "I will be a swift witness against ... those that oppress the hireling in his wages." Tobit charges his son Tobias, "Let not the wages of any man, which hath wrought for thee, tarry with thee, but give him it out of hand" (Tobit 4:14). Sirach (34:21 f.) says, "The bread of the needy is the life of the poor: he that defraudeth him thereof is a man of blood. He that taketh away his neighbor's living slayeth him; and he that defraudeth a laborer of his hire is a blood-shedder." Certainly, therefore, the Jews were not without explicit teaching on this vital point of elemental social justice.
And yet these men "who mowed" (literally, "heap together")[90] their fields had the sad experience of not receiving the wages, "of you kept back by fraud, comes too late from you" (Mayor). The word means to "fall short," "be too late."[91]
The honest laborers who form the foundation of our industrial system are not to be treated as beggars or hobos. They are not subjects for charity. They are the human element in the industrial problem. Blood is thicker than water and is more valuable than gold. The horror of war is that it treats men as fodder for cannon, regardless of the result to the man or those dependent on him.
This stolen pay "cries out" and ought to cry out, whether the hire is kept back after the work is done or whether the employer purposely squeezes the laborer down to starvation wages in order to make more money for himself. There is a just balance to be struck by which both capital and labor may receive fair remuneration. "The cries of them that reaped have entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth."