Nehemiah 5:1–5

Opposition from within

Now the men and their wives raised a great outcry against their Jewish brothers. 2 Some were saying, “We and our sons and daughters are numerous; in order for us to eat and stay alive, we must get grain.” 

3 Others were saying, “We are mortgaging our fields, our vineyards and our homes to get grain during the famine.”

4 Still others were saying, “We have had to borrow money to pay the king’s tax on our fields and vineyards. 5 Although we are of the same flesh and blood as our countrymen and though our sons are as good as theirs, yet we have to subject our sons and daughters to slavery. Some of our daughters have already been enslaved, but we are powerless, because our fields and our vineyards belong to others.”

“They are their own worst enemies.” This cliché certainly applied to the Jews of Nehemiah’s day. Just when it seemed they had beaten their enemies on the outside, dissension and division from within threatened the success of the rebuilding project. In our day too, when the church enjoys rest from its enemies and a period of peace to carry out its mission, Satan raises division and strife within the church to divert it from its work.

In Nehemiah’s time Satan’s method was leading the rich to exploit the poor. Famine, large families to feed, the heavy Persian taxes—all these factors combined to drive the poor Jewish farmers into bankruptcy. The farmers’ willingness to help rebuild the walls of Jerusalem may even have contributed to their plight. The time they spent in Jerusalem and away from their farms could only have worsened their situation. Their undefended farms were undoubtedly open to raids by Sanballat’s men. Seeing the rich take advantage of the poor made the poor people even more resentful of their economic position. When taking out mortgages on their land was not enough to pay their debts, they were forced into the desperate action of selling their children into slavery. It was either that or starvation for them and their children.

In ancient times people sometimes preferred slavery to a good master to freedom. The room and board a slave received offered relative security in comparison to the handto-mouth existence of the poor freeman. But slavery, though it offered some security, was still a humiliation for Israelites. God had redeemed them from their slavery in Egypt. Slavery could be especially humiliating for the daughters, since female slaves were sometimes used as secondary wives.

For these reasons the Lord had restricted the existence of slavery among the Israelites (Exodus 21:2-11; Leviticus 25:39-55; Deuteronomy 15:12-18). No Israelite could be held in slavery as a result of debt for more than six years. Then he had to be freed. A female slave who had been used as a wife could not be sold, but either had to keep her rights as a wife or go free. No family farm in Israel could be permanently sold but had to be returned to its original owner in the Year of Jubilee, that is, every 50th year. When Israelites were forced to borrow money from one another to obtain the necessities of life, they were not to be charged any interest. Israelites who had the means to help their less fortunate countrymen were to lend them what they needed to live, even when the lenders could expect no economic return from providing such help (Exodus 22:25-27; Leviticus 25:35-37; Deuteronomy 23:19,20). Helping a fellow member of God’s chosen people was to be an act of charity, not a business proposition.

Nehemiah’s contemporaries were flagrantly ignoring these provisions of God’s law. It appears they were not only exacting interest from their distressed neighbors, but were also selling them into slavery to foreigners. They could get a better price by selling them to foreigners, because the six-year limit on servitude was not observed by non-Israelites. But then there was no way that the slaves could gain their freedom, unless another Israelite paid the price of their ransoms.

The interest in ancient times was often figured on a monthly basis, so the “hundredth part” probably refers to 12 percent per year. While this figure doesn’t seem exorbitant in comparison with interest rates today, it was more than the poor could handle under the circumstances of Nehemiah’s time. What made matters worse was that this sin of economic exploitation was one of the sins that had been responsible for the judgment of captivity that had befallen Israel. The prophets Isaiah (5:8), Jeremiah (34:8-22), and Amos (2:6-8; 4:1; 5:11) had denounced this sin. Amos’ words of warning were typical: “You trample on the poor and force him to give you grain. Therefore, though you have built stone mansions, you will not live in them; though you have planted lush vineyards, you will not drink their wine” (5:11). But these warnings had been ignored. Now the Jews were again drifting back into these same sins that had caused the captivity, just as they had in the case of intermarriage. Furthermore, this sin of economic exploitation was stripping the land of the workers whom God had restored to Israel, just when they were needed the most.