Nehemiah 5

⁷For the vineyard of the Lord of Hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are the plant of His delight. He looked for justice, but saw bloodshed; for righteousness, but heard a cry of distress.

⁷If there is a poor man among your brothers within any of the gates in the land that the Lord your God is giving you, then you are not to harden your heart or shut your hand from your poor brother.

⁸Instead, you are to open your hand to him and freely loan him whatever he needs.

³⁵Now if your countryman becomes destitute and cannot support himself among you, then you are to help him as you would a foreigner or stranger, so that he can continue to live among you.

³⁶Do not take any interest or profit from him, but fear your God, that your countryman may live among you.

²⁸They caused the cry of the poor to come before Him, and He heard the outcry of the afflicted.

³⁸if my land cries out against me and its furrows weep together,

³⁹if I have devoured its produce without payment or broken the spirit of its tenants,

²⁶The next day he came upon two Israelites who were fighting, and he tried to reconcile them, saying, ‘Men, you are brothers. Why are you mistreating each other?’

²For when you eat the fruit of your labor, blessings and prosperity will be yours.

³Your wife will be like a fruitful vine flourishing within your house, your sons like olive shoots sitting around your table.

²If you do not listen, and if you do not take it to heart to honor My name,” says the Lord of Hosts, “I will send a curse among you, and I will curse your blessings. Yes, I have already begun to curse them, because you are not taking it to heart.

⁵⁷And every nation came to Joseph in Egypt to buy grain, because the famine was severe over all the earth.

³Children are indeed a heritage from the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is His reward.

⁴Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are children born in one’s youth.

⁸And Judah said to his father Israel, “Send the boy with me, and we will go at once, so that we may live and not die—neither we, nor you, nor our children.

²“Look,” he added, “I have heard that there is grain in Egypt. Go down there and buy some for us, so that we may live and not die.”

³⁵Now if your countryman becomes destitute and cannot support himself among you, then you are to help him as you would a foreigner or stranger, so that he can continue to live among you.

³⁶Do not take any interest or profit from him, but fear your God, that your countryman may live among you.

⁸Will a man rob God? Yet you are robbing Me! But you ask, ‘How do we rob You?’ In tithes and offerings.

⁹You are cursed with a curse, yet you—the whole nation—are still robbing Me.

⁷If there is a poor man among your brothers within any of the gates in the land that the Lord your God is giving you, then you are not to harden your heart or shut your hand from your poor brother.

¹⁵When the money from the lands of Egypt and Canaan was gone, all the Egyptians came to Joseph and said, “Give us food. Why should we die before your eyes? For our funds have run out!”

¹⁶“Then bring me your livestock,” said Joseph. “Since the money is gone, I will sell you food in exchange for your livestock.”

¹³Let it now be known to the king that if that city is rebuilt and its walls are restored, they will not pay tribute, duty, or toll, and the royal treasury will suffer.

²⁰And mighty kings have ruled over Jerusalem and exercised authority over the whole region west of the Euphrates; and tribute, duty, and toll were paid to them.

²¹their descendants who remained in the land, those whom the Israelites were unable to devote to destruction—Solomon conscripted these people to be forced laborers, as they are to this day.

²⁴And be advised that you have no authority to impose tribute, duty, or toll on any of the priests, Levites, singers, doorkeepers, temple servants, or other servants of this house of God.

³⁷Its abundant harvest goes to the kings You have set over us because of our sins. And they rule over our bodies and our livestock as they please. We are in great distress.

¹⁰But they did not drive out the Canaanites who lived in Gezer. So the Canaanites dwell among the Ephraimites to this day, but they are forced laborers.

¹Now the wife of one of the sons of the prophets cried out to Elisha, “Your servant, my husband, is dead, and you know that your servant feared the Lord. And now his creditor is coming to take my two children as his slaves!”

³⁹If a countryman among you becomes destitute and sells himself to you, then you must not force him into slave labor.

⁴⁰Let him stay with you as a hired worker or temporary resident; he is to work for you until the Year of Jubilee.

²⁷Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites and not lay a hand on him; for he is our brother, our own flesh.” And they agreed.

⁷Isn’t it to share your bread with the hungry, to bring the poor and homeless into your home, to clothe the naked when you see him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

¹“These are the ordinances that you are to set before them:

²If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free without paying anything.

⁵Listen, my beloved brothers: Has not God chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom He promised those who love Him?

⁶But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you and drag you into court?

²⁵I rebuked them and called down curses on them. I beat some of these men and pulled out their hair. Then I made them take an oath before God and said, “You must not give your daughters in marriage to their sons or take their daughters as wives for your sons or for yourselves!

⁸And all these officials of yours will come and bow before me, saying, ‘Go, you and all the people who follow you!’ After that, I will depart.” And hot with anger, Moses left Pharaoh’s presence.

²⁶“Be angry, yet do not sin.” Do not let the sun set upon your anger,

¹⁵Then Moses became very angry and said to the Lord, “Do not regard their offering. I have not taken one donkey from them or mistreated a single one of them.”

⁸And I was greatly displeased and threw all of Tobiah’s household goods out of the room.

⁵Jesus looked around at them with anger and sorrow at their hardness of heart. Then He said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” So he stretched it out, and it was restored.

³⁶Do not take any interest or profit from him, but fear your God, that your countryman may live among you.

¹⁹Do not charge your brother interest on money, food, or any other type of loan.

²⁰You may charge a foreigner interest, but not your brother, so that the Lord your God may bless you in everything to which you put your hand in the land that you are entering to possess.

²⁵If 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.

¹²In you they take bribes to shed blood. You engage in usury, take excess interest, and extort your neighbors. But Me you have forgotten, declares the Lord God.

⁶Then he said to the judges, “Consider carefully what you do, for you are not judging for man, but for the Lord, who is with you when you render judgment.

⁷And now, may the fear of the Lord be upon you. Be careful what you do, for with the Lord our God there is no injustice or partiality or bribery.”

²This is the manner of remission: Every creditor shall cancel what he has loaned to his neighbor. He is not to collect anything from his neighbor or brother, because the Lord’s time of release has been proclaimed.

³You may collect something from a foreigner, but you must forgive whatever your brother owes you.

⁴⁷If a foreigner residing among you prospers, but your countryman dwelling near him becomes destitute and sells himself to the foreigner or to a member of his clan,

⁴⁸he retains the right of redemption after he has sold himself. One of his brothers may redeem him:

⁷If a man is caught kidnapping one of his Israelite brothers, whether he treats him as a slave or sells him, the kidnapper must die. So you must purge the evil from among you.

¹⁵To one he gave five talents, to another two talents, and to another one talent—each according to his own ability. And he went on his journey.

¹²For if the eagerness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what he does not have.

¹¹So this weak brother, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge.

¹⁹Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God.

³⁶Do not take any interest or profit from him, but fear your God, that your countryman may live among you.

⁵Showing partiality to the wicked is not good, nor is depriving the innocent of justice.

²⁴As it is written: “God’s name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.”

¹²Conduct yourselves with such honor among the Gentiles that, though they slander you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day He visits us.

¹⁴Nevertheless, because by this deed you have shown utter contempt for the word of the Lord, the son born to you will surely die.”

⁵to be self-controlled, pure, managers of their households, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, so that the word of God will not be discredited.

¹As God’s fellow workers, then, we urge you not to receive God’s grace in vain.

²⁵If 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.

²⁶If you take your neighbor’s cloak as collateral, return it to him by sunset,

¹³He engages in usury and takes excess interest. Will this son live? He will not! Since he has committed all these abominations, he will surely die; his blood will be on his own head.

¹²If others have this right to your support, shouldn’t we have it all the more? But we did not exercise this right. Instead, we put up with anything rather than hinder the gospel of Christ.

¹³Do you not know that those who work in the temple eat of its food, and those who serve at the altar partake of its offerings?

¹Woe to those who devise iniquity and plot evil on their beds! At morning’s light they accomplish it because the power is in their hands.

²⁰Therefore we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making His appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ: Be reconciled to God.

⁶Isn’t this the fast that I have chosen: to break the chains of wickedness, to untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and tear off every yoke?

⁴once he has sinned and becomes guilty, he must return what he has stolen or taken by extortion, or the deposit entrusted to him, or the lost property he found,

⁵or anything else about which he has sworn falsely. He must make restitution in full, add a fifth of the value, and pay it to the owner on the day he acknowledges his guilt.

⁸Produce fruit, then, in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham.

³Here I am. Bear witness against me before the Lord and before His anointed: Whose ox or donkey have I taken? Whom have I cheated or oppressed? From whose hand have I accepted a bribe and closed my eyes? Tell me, and I will restore it to you.”

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

⁴Still others were saying, “We have borrowed money to pay the king’s tax on our fields and vineyards.

⁶Because he has done this thing and has shown no pity, he must pay for the lamb four times over.”

⁵So Ezra got up and made the leading priests, Levites, and all Israel take an oath to do what had been said. And they took the oath.

⁸After King Zedekiah had made a covenant with all the people in Jerusalem to proclaim liberty, the word came to Jeremiah from the Lord

⁹that each man should free his Hebrew slaves, both male and female, and no one should hold his fellow Jew in bondage.

²⁹hereby join with their noble brothers and commit themselves with a sworn oath to follow the Law of God given through His servant Moses and to obey carefully all the commandments, ordinances, and statutes of the Lord our Lord.

¹²And the whole assembly responded in a loud voice: “Truly we must do as you say!

²²When a man sins against his neighbor and is required to take an oath, and he comes to take an oath before Your altar in this temple,

²³then may You hear from heaven and act. May You judge Your servants, condemning the wicked man by bringing down on his own head what he has done, and justifying the righteous man by rewarding him according to his righteousness.

¹³And whoever would not seek the Lord, the God of Israel, would be put to death, whether young or old, man or woman.

¹⁴They took an oath to the Lord with a loud voice, with shouting, trumpets, and rams’ horns.

⁶But when they opposed and insulted him, he shook out his garments and told them, “Your blood be on your own heads! I am innocent of it. From now on I will go to the Gentiles.”

³⁶Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting.” Then all the people said, “Amen!” and “Praise the Lord!”

¹⁴And if anyone will not welcome you or heed your words, shake the dust off your feet when you leave that home or town.

³Then he told me, “This is the curse that is going out over the face of all the land, for according to one side of the scroll, every thief will be removed; and according to the other side, every perjurer will be removed.

⁴I will send it out, declares the Lord of Hosts, and it will enter the house of the thief and the house of him who swears falsely by My name. It will remain inside his house and destroy it, down to its timbers and stones.”

¹⁴Then the Levites shall proclaim in a loud voice to every Israelite:

¹⁵‘Cursed is the man who makes a carved idol or molten image—an abomination to the Lord, the work of the hands of a craftsman—and sets it up in secret.’ And let all the people say, ‘Amen!’

¹¹Make and fulfill your vows to the Lord your God; let all the neighboring lands bring tribute to Him who is to be feared.

⁶While all this was happening, I was not in Jerusalem, because I had returned to Artaxerxes king of Babylon in the thirty-second year of his reign. Some time later I obtained leave from the king

¹⁸What then is my reward? That in preaching the gospel I may offer it free of charge, and so not use up my rights in preaching it.

⁸nor did we eat anyone’s food without paying for it. Instead, in labor and toil, we worked night and day so that we would not be a burden to any of you.

⁹Not that we lack this right, but we wanted to offer ourselves as an example for you to imitate.

⁴Have we no right to food and to drink?

⁵Have we no right to take along a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the Lord’s brothers and Cephas?

¹³Let it now be known to the king that if that city is rebuilt and its walls are restored, they will not pay tribute, duty, or toll, and the royal treasury will suffer.

¹⁴Now because we are in the service of the palace and it is not fitting for us to allow the king to be dishonored, we have sent to inform the king

⁶This is also why you pay taxes. For the authorities are God’s servants, who devote themselves to their work.

⁷Pay everyone what you owe him: taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due.

⁹So I continued, “What you are doing is not right. Shouldn’t you walk in the fear of our God to avoid the reproach of our foreign enemies?

¹⁰Who among you fears the Lord and obeys the voice of His Servant? Who among you walks in darkness and has no light? Let him trust in the name of the Lord; let him lean on his God.

⁶By loving devotion and faithfulness iniquity is atoned for, and by the fear of the Lord one turns aside from evil.

⁹And when I was with you and in need, I was not a burden to anyone; for the brothers who came from Macedonia supplied my needs. I have refrained from being a burden to you in any way, and I will continue to do so.

²³For calamity from God terrifies me, and His splendor I cannot overpower.

¹³When all has been heard, the conclusion of the matter is this: Fear God and keep His commandments, because this is the whole duty of man.

¹⁴For God will bring every deed into judgment, along with every hidden thing, whether good or evil.

⁹Let us not grow weary in well-doing, for in due time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.

⁵As you know, we never used words of flattery or any pretext for greed. God is our witness!

⁶Nor did we seek praise from you or from anyone else, although as apostles of Christ we had authority to demand it.

⁵⁸Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast and immovable. Always excel in the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

³³I have not coveted anyone’s silver or gold or clothing.

³⁴You yourselves know that these hands of mine have ministered to my own needs and those of my companions.

²⁰I have nobody else like him who will genuinely care for your needs.

²¹For all the others look after their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ.

¹⁶Be that as it may, I was not a burden to you; but crafty as I am, I caught you by trickery.

¹⁷Did I exploit you by anyone I sent you?

¹⁹Now summon all Israel to meet me on Mount Carmel, along with the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal and the four hundred prophets of Asherah who eat at Jezebel’s table.”

⁹Show hospitality to one another without complaining.

¹⁰As good stewards of the manifold grace of God, each of you should use whatever gift he has received to serve one another.

⁷“Do not be afraid,” said David, “for surely I will show you kindness for the sake of your father Jonathan. I will restore to you all the land of your grandfather Saul, and you will always eat at my table.”

¹³Share with the saints who are in need. Practice hospitality.

⁸But a noble man makes honorable plans; he stands up for worthy causes.

¹³So Mephibosheth lived in Jerusalem, because he always ate at the king’s table, and he was lame in both feet.

²²Solomon’s provisions for a single day were thirty cors of fine flour, sixty cors of meal,

²³ten fat oxen, twenty range oxen, and a hundred sheep, as well as deer, gazelles, roebucks, and fattened poultry.

²¹The wicked borrow and do not repay, but the righteous are gracious and giving.

²⁶They are ever generous and quick to lend, and their children are a blessing.

¹⁴Furthermore, from the day King Artaxerxes appointed me to be their governor in the land of Judah, from his twentieth year until his thirty-second year (twelve years total), neither I nor my brothers ate the food allotted to the governor.

¹⁵The governors before me had heavily burdened the people, taking from them bread and wine plus forty shekels of silver. Their servants also oppressed the people. But I did not do this, because of my fear of God.

³¹I also arranged for contributions of wood at the appointed times, and for the firstfruits. Remember me, O my God, with favor.

⁴Remember me, O Lord, in Your favor to Your people; visit me with Your salvation,

¹⁴Remember me for this, O my God, and do not blot out my deeds of loving devotion for the house of my God and for its services.

²²Then I instructed the Levites to purify themselves and guard the gates in order to keep the Sabbath day holy. Remember me for this as well, O my God, and show me mercy according to Your abundant loving devotion.

¹¹For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, to give you a future and a hope.

⁶Remember, O Lord, Your compassion and loving devotion, for they are from age to age.

⁷Remember not the sins of my youth, nor my rebellious acts; remember me according to Your loving devotion, because of Your goodness, O Lord.