Nehemiah 5

¹ The ordinary people and their wives began complaining loudly against their brother Jews.

² Some said, ‘We are having to barter our sons and daughters to get enough corn to eat and keep us alive’.

³ Others said, ‘We are having to mortgage our fields, our vineyards, our houses to get corn during the famine’.

⁴ Still others said, ‘We have had to borrow money on our fields and our vineyards to pay the king’s tax;

⁵ and though we are of the same flesh as our brothers, and our children as good as theirs, we are having to sell our sons and our daughters into slavery; some of our daughters have even been raped! We can do nothing about it, since our fields and our vineyards are now the property of others.’

⁶ When I heard their complaints and these words I was very angry.

⁷ Having turned the matter over in my mind, I reprimanded the authorities and officials. ‘What a burden you impose,’ I said ‘every one of you on his brother!’ Summoning a great assembly to deal with them,

⁸ I said to them, ‘To the best of our power, we have redeemed our brother Jews who had been sold to foreigners, and now you in turn are selling our brothers for us to redeem them!’ They were silent and could find nothing to say.

⁹ ‘What you are doing’ I went on ‘is wrong. Do you not want to walk in the fear of our God and escape the sneers of the nations, our enemies?

¹⁰ I too, my kinsmen, and my servants have lent them money and corn. Let us cancel this debt.

¹¹ Return them their fields, their vineyards, their olive groves and their houses forthwith, and remit the debt on the money, corn, wine and oil which you have lent them.’

¹² ‘We will make restitution,’ they replied ‘we will claim nothing more from them; we will do as you say.’ At once I summoned the priests and made them swear to do as they had promised.

¹³ Then I shook out the lap of my gown with the words, ‘May God do this, and shake out of his house and property any man who does not keep this promise; may he be shaken out like this and left empty!’ And the whole assembly answered, ‘Amen’ and gave praise to Yahweh. And the people kept this promise.

¹⁴ What is more, from the day the king appointed me governor in the land of Judah, from the twentieth to the thirty-second year of King Artaxerxes, for twelve years, neither I nor my kinsmen ever ate governor’s bread.[*a]

¹⁵ Now the former governors, my predecessors, had been a burden on the people, from whom they took forty silver shekels each day as their subsistence allowance, while their servants oppressed the people too. But I, fearing God, never did this.

¹⁶ And furthermore I worked on this wall all the time, though I owned no land; and my servants also were all employed on the work.

¹⁷ Leaders and officials to the number of a hundred and fifty ate at my table, not to mention those who came to us from the surrounding nations.

¹⁸ Every day, one ox, six fine sheep, and poultry, were prepared at my expense; every ten days skins of wine were brought in bulk. But even so, I never claimed the governor’s subsistence allowance, since the people already had burden enough to bear.

¹⁹ In my favour, my God, remember all I have done for this people.