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Exodus 22:24-26
New English Translation
Exodus 22:24-26
New English Translation
24 and my anger will burn and I will kill you with the sword, and your wives will be widows and your children will be fatherless.[a]
25 “If you lend money to any of[b] my people who are needy among you, do not be like a moneylender[c] to him; do not charge[d] him interest.[e] 26 If you do take[f] the garment of your neighbor in pledge, you must return it to him by the time the sun goes down,[g]
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- Exodus 22:24 sn The punishment will follow the form of talionic justice, an eye for an eye, in which the punishment matches the crime. God will use invading armies (“sword” is a metonymy of adjunct here) to destroy them, making their wives widows and their children orphans.
- Exodus 22:25 tn “any of” has been supplied.
- Exodus 22:25 sn The moneylender will be demanding and exacting. In Ps 109:11 and 2 Kgs 4:1 the word is rendered as “extortioner.”
- Exodus 22:25 tn Heb “set.”
- Exodus 22:25 sn In ancient times money was lent primarily for poverty and not for commercial ventures (H. Gamoran, “The Biblical Law against Loans on Interest,” JNES 30 [1971]: 127-34). The lending to the poor was essentially a charity, and so not to be an opportunity to make money from another person’s misfortune. The word נֶשֶׁךְ (neshekh) may be derived from a verb that means “to bite,” and so the idea of usury or interest was that of putting out one’s money with a bite in it (See S. Stein, “The Laws on Interest in the Old Testament,” JTS 4 [1953]: 161-70; and E. Neufeld, “The Prohibition against Loans at Interest in the Old Testament,” HUCA 26 [1955]: 355-412).
- Exodus 22:26 tn The construction again uses the infinitive absolute with the verb in the conditional clause to stress the condition.
- Exodus 22:26 tn The clause uses the preposition, the infinitive construct, and the noun that is the subjective genitive—“at the going in of the sun.”
New English Translation (NET)
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