The Weight of $692 Million

What's happening

TechCrunch reported last week that Google awarded CEO Sundar Pichai a compensation package worth $692 million, the vast majority in stock grants. The disclosure came during a period in which Google conducted multiple rounds of layoffs across the company.

Separately, Oracle announced 30,000 job cuts to redirect resources toward AI data center construction, only for major banks to pull financing from those same projects days later. The workers were sacrificed for an investment that may never materialize.

According to Brookings, 6.1 million American workers face both high AI exposure and low capacity to adapt to new roles. Eighty-six percent of them are women. Across the tech industry, the pattern holds: executive compensation climbs while workers absorb the cost. The debate over whether this is simply how markets function or whether something deeper is being revealed has spilled across social media, where one widely shared comment captured the mood: "Gilded Age on total crack."

What the text says

Jeremiah was speaking to Jehoiakim, king of Judah, who was building a lavish new palace while the nation slid toward collapse.

Jeremiah 22:13-1713Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness, and his rooms by injustice; who uses his neighbor's service without wages, and doesn't give him his hire;14who says, I will build me a wide house and spacious rooms, and cuts him out windows; and it is ceiling with cedar, and painted with vermilion.15Shall you reign, because you strive to excel in cedar? Didn't your father eat and drink, and do justice and righteousness? then it was well with him.16He judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was well. Wasn't this to know me? says Yahweh.17But your eyes and your heart are not but for your covetousness, and for shedding innocent blood, and for oppression, and for violence, to do it.

The charge was specific: the king was using unpaid labor to expand his residence, paneling it with cedar and painting it vermilion while the workers who built it received nothing. What makes the passage unusual is what follows. Jeremiah points to Jehoiakim's father, Josiah, and asks: didn't he eat and drink and live well too? Josiah was no ascetic. He was a king who enjoyed his reign. The difference was that Josiah "judged the cause of the poor and needy." And then Jeremiah delivers one of the most striking equations in the Hebrew Bible: "Is not this to know me? declares the LORD."

In Jeremiah's theology, knowing God is measured by whether the powerful defend the powerless. The king who builds while his workers go unpaid does not merely violate a labor standard. He reveals that he does not know God at all.

The reflection

The comparison is uncomfortable because it is precise. Jeremiah was describing a specific pattern: wealth accumulated at the top through the labor of those discarded at the bottom. The cedar palace and vermilion paint are eighth-century details. The $692 million and the layoff notices are from last week. Josiah lived well too. The prophetic question has always been about what happens to the workers while the palace goes up. A system that enriches one person by hundreds of millions while discarding thousands can call itself efficient. Jeremiah had a different word for it.