Later text
Nehemiah 5:4BSB
Still others were saying, "We have borrowed money to pay the king's tax on our fields and vineyards.
Intertextuality Pair
Allusion
Later text
Nehemiah 5:4BSB
Still others were saying, "We have borrowed money to pay the king's tax on our fields and vineyards.
Earlier text
If you lend money to one of My people among you who is poor, you must not act as a creditor to him; you are not to charge him interest. If you take your neighbor's cloak as collateral, return it to him by sunset, because his cloak is the only covering he has for his body. What else will he sleep in? And if he cries out to Me, I will hear, for I am compassionate.
Nehemiah 5:4 describes people who "borrowed money to pay the king's tax on our fields and vineyards" — a situation where foreign imperial taxation drives Israelites to borrow at interest from wealthier countrymen, violating the Exodus 22:25 prohibition: "If you lend money to one of My people among you who is poor, you must not act as a creditor" (לֹא־תִהְיֶה לוֹ כְּנֹשֶׁה, lo-tihyeh lo kenoseh). The double burden of Persian taxation plus Israelite usury creates the economic crisis Nehemiah must address. The Exodus law envisions precisely such vulnerability — the poor borrowing out of necessity — and prohibits fellow Israelites from profiting from their brothers' distress. Because the mortgaged fields are Israel's covenant inheritance (נַחֲלָה, nachalah), the crisis inverts the exodus itself — the redeemed community being re-enslaved within the very land God had given it.