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Backgrounds of the Biblical Law against Usury

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Bernard J. Meislin  and
Morris L. Cohen
Bernard J. Meislin
Affiliation:
Member of the New York Bar
Morris L. Cohen
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
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Extract

The Hebrew Bible contains a thrice repeated prohibition against the taking of interest on loans. For many centuries, these injunctions exerted a profound influence on the life and thought of the Western World. However, they have never been significantly observed or consistently enforced in their original, categorical terms. From an absolute prohibition, which treated all interest (of any kind, in any amount) as usurious, we have developed, through economic revolutions and moral transvaluations, a quantitative morality which determines legality by the rate of taking, rather than by the fact of interest. Today, these laws lack force either as social legislation or as religious command. They are virtually ignored and forgotten by men of affairs of all stations, Jewish and Christians alike. Only the social and religious philosophers, historians and other scholars of the past are still excited by the moral implications of this prohibition.

Type
Economic Ideas
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 6 , Issue 3 , April 1964 , pp. 250 - 267
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1964

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References

1 See, e.g., Nelson, Benjamin, The Idea of Usury (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949);Google ScholarNoonan, J.T., Jr., Scholastic Analysis of Usury (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957);Google Scholar and Divine, Thomas, Interest, an Historical and Analytical Study in Economics and Ethics (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1959).Google Scholar For a statement of the legal viewpoint, see Hagaman v. Reinach, 48 Misc. 206, 96 N.Y.S. 719 (1905).

2 The biblical text used throughout this paper is The Pentateuch and Haftorahs, edited by The Late Chief Rabbi Dr.Hertz, J.H. (London: Soncino Press, 1956)Google Scholar, which is based on the traditional Masoretic text.

3 The most thorough and scholarly modern treatment of this subject, which includes close analysis of the text, is Neufeld, Edward, “The Prohibitions Against Loans at Interest in Ancient Hebrew Laws”, Hebrew Union College Annual, Vol. XXVI (1955), pp. 355–412.Google Scholar Although our conclusions differed on a number of points, his original research is truly formidable and helped the authors greatly. His work is the most valuable treatment of this subject available in English.

4 For example, St. Jerome and St. Ambrose of Milan in the 4th Century.

5 Nelson, op. cit., p. viii.

6 See Tawney, R.H., Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (London: John Murray, 1944 reprint) for a detailed discussion of the interrelation of these economic and theological transformations.Google Scholar

7 George, Charles H., “English Calvinist Opinion on Usury, 1600–1640”, Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. XVIII (1957), pp. 455–474.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 The classic statement of this position is in Bentham's, JeremyLetters in Defense of Usury, 1787.Google Scholar This attack on the prohibition of usury led directly to the virtual elimination of the restriction in England by 1854.

9 Aristotle, Politics, Book I, Ch. 10 in Basic Works of Aristotle, edited by McKeon, Richard (N.Y., Random House, 1941), p. 1141.Google Scholar

10 For a discussion of this reference, see Stein, S., “The Laws on Interest in the Old Testament”, Journal of Theological Studies, New Series, Vol. IV, Part 2 (1953) at pp. 162–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Smith, J. M. Powis, The Origin and History of Hebrew Law (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1931, reprinted 1960), p. 39.Google Scholar

12 See, e.g., Elliott, Calvin, Usury (Millersburg, Ohio, published by The Anti-Usury League, 1902), p. 17.Google Scholar

13 Wright, C.E., The National Geographic Magazine, Vol. CXII, No. 6, Dec, 1957, p. 839.Google Scholar

14 Olmstead, A.T., “Materials for an Economic History of the Ancient Near East”, Journal of Economic and Business History, Vol. II (Feb. 1930), p. 233.Google Scholar See also Judges 1:28, 30, 35.

15 Schaeffer, Henry, The Social Legislation of the Primitive Semites (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1915).Google Scholar See Ch. XIV which traces the development of individual landownership in Israel.

16 Mendenhall, G.E., “The Hebrew Conquest of Palestine”, The Biblical Archaeologist, Vol. XXV, 1962, p. 66.Google Scholar

17 Corswant, W., “Commerce”, in A Dictionary of Life in Bible Times (N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 1960), pp. 81–82.Google Scholar

18 Wright, G. Ernest, Biblical Archeology (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1957), pp. 89–93.Google Scholar The view of Cretan origin of the Philistines has been criticized as relying too heavily on biblical tradition, a general Aegean origin being claimed. But see Gordon, C.H., Before the Bible (N.Y.: Harper & Row, 1962), pp. 40,Google Scholar 117, crediting Caphtor as the source of the Philistine invasion.

19 Corswant, op. cit., “Money”, p. 186.

20 Stein, op. cit., at p. 169, refers to these two Aramaic documents from the Elephantine papyri dated 456–5 B.C.

21 A number of these are translated and discussed in Johns, C.H.W., Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters (N.Y.: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1904),Google Scholar Chapters XXIII and XXIV.

22 Ibid., p. 251.

23 Ibid., p. 255.

24 Driver, G.R. and Miles, John C. (editors), The Babylonian Laws (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955, reprinted 1960), Vol. II, p. 29.Google Scholar See also the editors' commentary on this section in Vol. I, p. 144.

25 A study of this temple structure from clay tablets, by Professor George Hackman of Wagner College, is reported in the New York Times, March 9, 1959, p. 26.

26 Gelb, I.J., “Old Akkadian Inscriptions”, Fieldiana: Anthropology, Vol. 44, No. 2 (ChicagoNat'l Hist. Museum, 1955);Google ScholarSchmokel, H., “Das Land Sumer”, Urban-bücher, 13 (Kohlhammer, Stuttgart, 1956);Google Scholar, Jones and Snyder, , Sumerian Economic Texts (Univ. of Minn. Press, 1961);Google ScholarAnderson, , “The Early Sumerian City-State in Recent Soviet Historiography”, Abr.-Akhrain (Melbourne), Vol. 1, 56–61. See also City Invincible (University of Chicago Press, 1961).Google Scholar

27 Lutz, Henry F., “Babylonian Partnership”, Journal of Economic and Business History, Vol. IV (05 1932), pp. 556–59.Google Scholar

28 Ibid., pp. 552–53.

29 See Frankfort, The Birth of Civilization in the Near East (Doubleday Anchor Books), p. 64 ff.

30 Henry F. Lutz, loc. cit., pp. 553–54.

31 Ibid., p. 557; see also Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania, Cuneiform Texts, Vol. iii, pt. 1 (Philadelphia, 1910), No. 14.

32 L. Orlin, doctoral dissertation, University of Michigan, “Old Assyrian Trading Colonies in Cappadocia”.

33 Johns, op. cit., pp. 281–82; Lutz, loc. cit., pp. 557–58.

34 For a discussion of the Hammurabi Code provisions dealing with these relationships, see Driver & Miles, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 186 et seq.

35 Vorderasiatische Schriftdenkmaler, vol. viii (Leipzig, 1909), No. 71; Lutz, loc. cit., p. 569.Google Scholar

36 Lutz, loc. cit., p. 558.

37 Ibid.

38 Smith, op. cit., pp. 18–19. Describing the relation between the Covenant Code of Exodus and the Hammurabi Code, he finds that “the provisions in the case of each law in Hammurabi's Code are much more detailed and elaborate and presuppose a much greater experience with the practices of an advanced social and economic order than is the case with the precepts of the Covenant Code”.

39 Cf. Neufeld, op. cit., pp. 367–72, who feels that economic conditions underlying each of the Codes have been underestimated. He sees the community of the Covenant Code as further along the road to an agricultural society and already familiar with commercial relations.

40 Oppenheim, , Trade and Market in the Early Empires (Free Press: Glencoe, III., 1957),Google Scholar suggests the presence of state-insured loans as distinguished from private loans between citizens as the source of the Deuteronomic injunction against interest on loans of the latter class.

41 Stein, op. cit., p. 165.

42 de Vaux, Roland, Ancient Israel, Its Life and Institutions (N.Y.: McGraw-Hill, 1961), p. 143;Google Scholar Stein, op. cit., p. 164, describes the Book of Exodus and the life it reflects as follows: “Only six out of eighty-six verses deal with agriculture. It seems, therefore, that agriculture played only a secondary role in the society for which the Book of Covenant was destined. The mainly pastoral character of its legislation is confirmed, by the ordinance of the sabbatical year and — incidentally — the jubilee year regulations of Leviticus, ch. 23, both of which can best be understood as belonging to a group of half sedentary people who were on the point of settling permanently but who, for the time being, were assured of their livelihood by their pastoral mode of life.”

43 Schaeffer, op. cit., pp. 113–14.

44 Neufeld, op. cit., pp. 355–57.

45 This conclusion is supported by the overwhelming weight of authority. See the list of authorities cited by Neufeld, op. cit., p. 360.

46 See, e.g., reference to the King's merchants at I Kings 10:28–29.

47 Olmstead, op. cit., p. 234; Bailey, Albert E., Daily Life in Bible Times (Scribner's, 1943), p. 204.Google Scholar

48 Neufeld, op. cit., p. 378.

49 I Kings 14:30.

50 I Kings 15:16.

51 I Kings 14:25–26.

52 Neufeld, op. cit., p. 364.

53 The Interpreters Bible, Vol. II (Abindon-Cokesbury Press, 1953), p. 124.Google Scholar

54 Exodus 12:49, 22:20; Leviticus 19:33–34; Deuteronomy 10:18, 24:17. See also Neufeld, op. cit., p. 392–93.

55 The custom of landlords lending grain for sowing purposes to tenants to be returned in kind appears widely prevalent by Talmudic times. Baba Mazia 74(b) (London: Soncino Press, 1935), p. 431.Google Scholar This loan practice was not regarded as lending at interest but as an addition, as it were, to the land leased; and in consideration thereof the tenant is to pay the landlord the same quantity over and above what he would otherwise have to pay him.

56 Johns, op. cit., p. 255.

57 Support for this contention may also be found in Olmstead's statement, op. cit., p. 227, that “In a few cases, the Canaanite Code actually translates the code of Hammurabi … Later, this Canaanite Code of fifty laws was incorporated into the first Hebrew Code … ”.

58 The identification of lender with taskmaster or landlord is frequently made. See Deuteronomy 15:6, 18:12, 28:13.

59 Nelson, op. cit., presents some of the early Christian and Medieval views in his Chapter I, called, significantly, the “Deuteronomic Double Standard”. He also refers, at p. xvi, to those, including Maimonides, who interpret it as a positive commandment, rather than merely a permission.

60 Weber, Max, General Economic History (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1950 reprint), pp. 267–68.Google Scholar

61 Neufeld, op. cit., pp. 401–07.

62 Guttmann, Michael, “The Term ‘Foreigner’ (Nokri) Historically Considered”, Hebrew Union College Annual, Vol. III (1926), p. 7:Google Scholar “If an equal basis for trading between Israelites and foreigners was to be established it could be attained only in this way; that the restrictions of the release year and the law of interest, which were not binding on the stranger a priori were also void for the Israelite insofar as trade with foreigners was concerned.”

63 ibid., pp. 1–7; Neufeld, op. cit., pp. 389–91.

64 Rostovtzeff, M., “Foreign Commerce of Ptolemaic Egypt”, Journal of Economic and Business History, Vol. IV (08 1932), p. 743Google Scholar n.

65 Neufeld, op. cit., p. 393.

66 Weber, op. cit.

67 Exodus 22:26.

68 Leviticus 25:35, 38.

69 Nelson, op. cit., p. 135.

70 The village-oriented economic philosophy of the prophets, with its anti-usury bias and emphasis on interest-free loans to alleviate need, is illustrated forcefully in Nehemiah 5:1–13. The prophet calls on the post-exilic Hebrew community to abjure the practice then prevalent of making interest-bearing loans to alleviate need.

71 Baron, Salo W., A Social and Religious History of the Jews, Vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 2nd ed. 1952), p. 156.Google Scholar