“Buy from Me gold... white garments... salve to anoint your eyes”
You say, 'I am rich; I have grown wealthy and need nothing.'… I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich, white garments so that you may be clothed… and salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. (Revelation 3:17–18 BSB)
What it sounds like today
Three random remedies.
The cultural key
Three local industries, each inverted. Laodicea was a banking center so wealthy that after the earthquake of AD 60 it declined imperial disaster relief and rebuilt from its own funds (Tacitus notes it with admiration). It was famous for glossy black wool. And its medical school exported a renowned eye ointment. So the counsel reads: to the bankers, buy real gold from me; to the black-wool merchants, white garments; to the eye-salve city, something for your own blindness.
Recovered meaning
The audit turns the city's three export products into a diagnosis: wealthy, well-dressed, and clear-sighted by profession, yet 'wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked' by inspection. Every remedy is sold at only one counter, and it is not on their high street.