Prohibition of Interest

Biblical Texts

• Exodus 22:25: Anyone who lends money to the poor is not to act toward them as a creditor or charge them interest.
• Leviticus 25:35-37: When helping a brother who has fallen on hard times, one is not to charge interest on money or food. This provision appears in the same chapter as the regulations for the Jubilee.
• Deuteronomy 23:19-20: Charging interest to a brother is forbidden, but charging interest to a foreigner is permitted.

In addition, Psalms 15:5, Proverbs 28:8, and Ezekiel 18:8, 13 list lending at interest among unrighteous acts. In Nehemiah 5, Nehemiah rebukes the nobles who had been exacting interest from their fellow Jews and makes them stop.

Background

The Hebrew text uses two words for interest. Neshek is generally understood to share a root with the verb "to bite." Tarbit or marbit means "increase." In ancient Israel, debt was usually incurred simply to survive in times of famine or poverty, so interest was regarded as a means of driving the vulnerable into deeper poverty. Many interpreters understand Deuteronomy's permission to charge interest to foreigners as having in view dealings with foreign merchants who traveled for trade.

The word rendered "interest" (ija) in the Korean Revised New Korean Standard Version was translated byeonri in the older Korean Revised Version; byeonri is an archaic Korean term for interest.

Significance in the Whole of Scripture

The prohibition of interest, together with the release of debts in the sabbatical year and the restoration of land in the Jubilee, forms part of the law's protection of the poor. In the New Testament, Jesus broadens this principle, saying, "lend, hoping for nothing again" (Luke 6:35). By contrast, in the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:27) and the Parable of the Minas (Luke 19:23), the master speaks of depositing money to earn interest as a matter of course. These details are generally regarded as part of the parables' narrative material rather than as teaching about interest.

Interpretation and Issues

• Church history: The Council of Nicaea is reported to have forbidden clergy to lend money at interest. The medieval church strictly prohibited lending at interest in general.
• Reformation: Martin Luther sharply criticized usury. John Calvin is reported to have held that, while interest that exploits the poor is forbidden, moderate interest on commercial loans could be permitted.
• Today: Most Protestants do not regard this provision as a prohibition of the financial system as a whole. Instead, they read it as a principle against profiting from a neighbor's hardship. It is also sometimes cited as grounds for the teaching that help for struggling members within the church should be given as charitable relief.
• Parable of the Unjust Steward: Some scholars interpret the steward's reduction of the debts as the removal of the interest portion forbidden by the law. This view is a scholarly theory not directly stated in the text.
• Scripture does not specify permissible interest rates or detailed standards for financial transactions.