This is the angriest chapter in the book and the only one that comes close to naming a crime.
It sets three facts side by side without comment. The court is swept immaculate. The fields are choked with weeds. The granaries are empty. The juxtaposition is the argument: the resources that produce a spotless court are the resources that are not being spent on the fields, and the empty granary is what the arrangement costs.
Then the picture of the beneficiaries, in four details that are all consumption: embroidered clothes, a sharp sword, being sated with food and drink, and goods and wealth to spare. The chapter calls this the boastfulness of robbery and says flatly that it is not the way.
The phrase is unusual for this book. Elsewhere a fault is described by its consequences, and the reader is told that the violent do not die a natural death or that a strong thing will be cut down. Here a class of people is described in specific terms and the word for theft is applied to them. Chapter seventy-five does something similar when it says the people are hungry because those above eat too much in taxes.
The chapter opens on a quieter note that frames the rest. If I had the smallest scrap of knowledge I would walk on the great way, and my only fear would be of straying. The great way is very level, and yet people love the byways. Having established that the plain road is easy and available, the chapter goes on to show who is on the byways and what it costs everyone else.