Because they have forsaken My law. .. give them water of gall to drink.
The wages of sin
A quaint preacher, addressing miners, drew a picture of two mines. He represented payday at one of the mines, and described the long line of men coming to the cashier’s desk to receive their wages. Presently some men came up whom the cashier did not know. “Where have you been working?” he asked. “We were working in the other pit,” they answered. “Then that is the place to go for your money.” “No,” they said, “we like your pay best; we are tired, and we want rest, and we want peace and plenty. At the pit where we have been working they are treating us cruelly, and we get no pay, but blows and hard words. Won’t you pay us?” But the cashier says, “No; you chose to work in the other pit, and you must take the wages they pay; you cannot work for one employer and get your wages from another.” “That was fair, was it not?” the preacher asked. His hearers answered that it was. “Then,” said he, “don’t you serve the devil unless you want his wages.”