Interest

Interest is the charge a lender requires from a borrower over and above the amount lent, and in Scripture it is treated chiefly as a moral and covenant question rather than a purely commercial one. The Hebrew noun most often rendered "interest" is neshek, traditionally connected with a root meaning "to bite," and it frequently appears paired with tarbit or marbit, "increase" — a point of established Hebrew lexicography. The law forbids it toward a poor fellow Israelite: "If you lend money to any of my people with you who is poor, you shall not be to him as a creditor. You shall not charge him interest" (Exodus 22:25), and "You shall not lend him your money at interest, nor give him your food for profit" (Leviticus 25:37). Deuteronomy 23:20 draws the line explicitly: "You may charge a foreigner interest; but you shall not charge your brother interest, that Yahweh your God may bless you in all that you put your hand to."

The narrative and prophetic texts show what the laws were guarding against. In Nehemiah 5 the people cry that other men hold their fields and vineyards and that their sons and daughters have been brought into bondage (Nehemiah 5:5); Nehemiah appeals to the redemption he has already worked for Jews sold to the nations (Nehemiah 5:8), says plainly, "The thing that you do is not good" (Nehemiah 5:9), and binds the assembly by oath, which they ratify with "Amen" (Nehemiah 5:13). Psalm 15:5 places the one "who doesn't lend out his money for usury" among those who may dwell with God, and Proverbs 28:8 warns that wealth gathered by "excessive interest" ends with one who has pity on the poor. Ezekiel lists lending at interest among the abominations that bring death — "shall he then live? He shall not live" (Ezekiel 18:13), set against the righteous man who "hasn't lent to them with interest" (Ezekiel 18:8) — and names it among Jerusalem's sins: "You have taken interest and increase, and you have greedily gained of your neighbors by oppression, and have forgotten me" (Ezekiel 22:12).

Interpreters differ on how the law's scope should be described. The prohibition is tied to the brother and to the poor who is "with you" (Exodus 22:25; Leviticus 25:37), while Deuteronomy 23:20 permits interest from the foreigner; scholars debate whether that "foreigner" means the transient trader or any non-Israelite, and how far legislation framed for an agrarian society without credit markets carries over into other economies. The prophets press beyond legal categories, joining interest with oppression and the forgetting of God (Ezekiel 22:12), so that the concern is consistently the borrower's survival rather than the mechanics of finance.

Christian and Jewish traditions have read these texts quite differently. In Jewish law the biblical prohibition was extended by rabbinic rulings and adapted through partnership arrangements that distinguish a loan from an investment. In the early and medieval church, usury was widely condemned outright — the Council of Nicaea barred it to clergy, and later canon law and Thomas Aquinas treated it as sin — a position still reflected in Catholic social teaching's insistence that a loan may not be repaid with more merely for the use of money. Reformation-era and later Protestant writers increasingly allowed interest within limits and under regulation. Many modern Christian bodies read the passages as condemning exploitative or excessive interest and debt bondage rather than all return on lending, while others hold the brother–foreigner distinction to be morally serious in some form, and some communities have sought to avoid interest-bearing lending among their own members altogether.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.