Nehemiah 5 Devotional

When Brothers Become Creditors

“So 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?”Nehemiah 5:9 (BSB)

In Nehemiah 5 the outcry rises from God's own people against their fellow Jews. To get grain during famine, families have mortgaged fields and homes, borrowed to pay the king's tax, and even seen sons and daughters enslaved, with no way to redeem them (5:1-5). Nehemiah is furious, thinks it over, and confronts the nobles before a large assembly (5:6-8).

He asks whether they ought not to walk in the fear of God (5:9), and he calls them to stop charging interest and return what they have taken. They swear to it, and the assembly praises the LORD (5:11-13). The Law had forbidden taking interest from a poor countryman, grounding the command in the LORD who brought Israel out of Egypt (Leviticus 25:36-38). God freed his people from slavery, so they must not enslave one another. Nehemiah himself declines the governor's food allowance because he fears God and the people's burden is heavy (5:14-18). A God who rescued you gives you every reason to lift burdens rather than profit from them.

To think about: Whose burden could you lighten this week instead of quietly benefiting from it?