Bible Verses About Creditors

and after serious thought I rebuked the nobles and officials, saying, “You are exacting usury from your own brothers!” So I called a large assembly against them

and said, “We have done our best to buy back our Jewish brothers who were sold to foreigners, but now you are selling your own brothers, that they may be sold back to us!” But they remained silent, for they could find nothing to say.

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?

I, as well as my brothers and my servants, have been lending the people money and grain. Please, let us stop this usury.

Please restore to them immediately their fields, vineyards, olive groves, and houses, along with the percentage of the money, grain, new wine, and oil that you have been assessing them.”

“We will restore it,” they replied, “and will require nothing more from them. We will do as you say.” So I summoned the priests and required of the nobles and officials an oath that they would do what they had promised.

They drive away the donkey of the fatherless and take the widow’s ox in pledge.

They push the needy off the road and force all the poor of the land into hiding.

Indeed, like wild donkeys in the desert, the poor go to work foraging for food; the wasteland is food for their children.

They gather fodder in the fields and glean the vineyards of the wicked.

Without clothing, they spend the night naked; they have no covering against the cold.

Drenched by mountain rains, they huddle against the rocks for want of shelter.

The fatherless infant is snatched from the breast; the nursing child of the poor is seized for a debt.

But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. He grabbed him and began to choke him, saying, ‘Pay back what you owe me!’

So his fellow servant fell down and begged him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you back.’

But he refused. Instead, he went and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay his debt.

And he called in each one of his master’s debtors. ‘How much do you owe my master?’ he asked the first.

‘A hundred measures of olive oil,’ he answered. ‘Take your bill,’ said the manager. ‘Sit down quickly, and write fifty.’

Then he asked another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ ‘A hundred measures of wheat,’ he replied. ‘Take your bill and write eighty,’ he told him.