DEUT1384 I have further seen fit to append to these laws the regulations governing paying the hire of laborers, since this matter is of supreme importance. It involves a number of explicit Torah prohibitions. Yet many individuals treat these laws lightly, because of our many sins. They find it easy to defer payment for some minor excuse, such as being too lazy to go and withdraw their deposits, or to change a large bill so as to pay the worker on time. Legally, one is obliged to comply with all the regulations, even where the worker is well-to-do. How much more careful must the employer be where the worker is poor, to pay him on time, so that he and his household will have the wherewithal to live, as Scripture states [this verse]. Come now and see what the Zohar (Leviticus 19:13) has to say: "Why does Scripture state: 'The wages of a hired servant shall not abide with you all night until the morning'? The reason for this last injunction is to be found in [this] verse, that is to say, that you not be gathered from the world on his account before your time comes. From this we learn another thing, that if one restores the soul of a poor man, even if his own time has arrived to depart from the world, God restores his soul and gives him a further lease on life. To withhold the wages of a poor man is like taking his life and the life of his household. As he (the employer) diminishes their souls, so God diminishes his days, and cuts off his soul from the other world. For all the breaths which issue from his (the poor man's) mouth for the whole of that day ascend and stand before the Almighty, and afterwards his soul and the souls of his household ascend and stand in those breaths. Thus even if the length of days and many blessings have been decreed for that man, they are all withdrawn, nor does his soul mount aloft. Therefore R. Abba said: God save us from them and their plaint! And the same is true even if it is a rich man, and his right is withheld from him, and surely if he is a poor man.