Nehemiah 5: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The poorer Jews cry out against wealthier fellow Jews: famine, taxes, and loans have cost them their fields and forced them to sell their children into slavery. Nehemiah confronts the nobles and officials, gets them to swear before the priests that they will return the property and the interest, and seals the oath with a curse gesture. He then describes his own twelve years as governor, during which he refused the governor's food allowance and fed many at his own table, and asks God to remember what he has done.

Claim by Claim

1. 5:1
   • There was a great outcry of the people against their brethren the Jews.
   • The wives of the people joined in that outcry.
2. 5:2
   • Some of the people were saying that they and their sons and their daughters were many.
   • These said they were getting grain so that they might eat and stay alive.
3. 5:3
   • Others were saying that they were mortgaging their fields, their vineyards, and their houses.
   • These said they did so in order to get grain during the famine.
4. 5:4
   • Others were saying that they had borrowed money for the king's tax.
   • The borrowing was secured on their fields and vineyards.
5. 5:5
   • The speakers said their flesh was the same as the flesh of their brethren.
   • They said their children were the same as the children of their brethren.
   • They said they were subjecting their sons and daughters to slavery.
   • They said some of their daughters had already been forced into slavery.
   • They said it was not in the power of their hand to prevent it.
   • They said their fields and vineyards belonged to others.
6. 5:6
   • Nehemiah became very angry.
   • His anger came when he heard their outcry and these words.
7. 5:7
   • Nehemiah took counsel with himself.
   • Nehemiah brought a charge against the nobles and the officials.
   • Nehemiah told them that each of them was exacting a debt-burden from his own brother.
   • Nehemiah convened a great assembly against them.
8. 5:8
   • Nehemiah said they had bought back their Jewish brethren who had been sold to the nations.
   • Nehemiah said this buying back was done so far as they were able.
   • Nehemiah asked whether the nobles would now sell their own brethren.
   • Nehemiah asked whether those brethren would then be sold back to them.
   • The nobles kept silent.
   • The nobles found nothing to say in reply.
9. 5:9
   • Nehemiah said the thing they were doing was not good.
   • Nehemiah asked whether they ought not to walk in the fear of their God.
   • Nehemiah gave the reproach of the nations, their enemies, as the reason for walking in that fear.
10. 5:10
    • Nehemiah said that he and his brethren and his servants were also creditors of the people in money and grain.
    • Nehemiah proposed that they abandon this exacting of debt.
11. 5:11
    • Nehemiah asked them to restore to the people that very day their fields, vineyards, olive groves, and houses.
    • Nehemiah asked them also to restore the hundredth part of the money, the grain, the new wine, and the oil that they were exacting from them.
12. 5:12
    • The nobles said they would restore these things.
    • The nobles said they would require nothing from the people.
    • The nobles said they would do as Nehemiah said.
    • Nehemiah called the priests.
    • Nehemiah put those present under oath to act according to this promise; the text leaves it unclear whether the ones sworn were the priests or the nobles.
13. 5:13
    • Nehemiah shook out the fold of his garment.
    • Nehemiah said that God should likewise shake out from his house and from his property every man who does not keep this promise.
    • Nehemiah said that such a man should be shaken out and left empty.
    • All the assembly said Amen.
    • They praised the LORD.
    • The people acted according to this promise.
14. 5:14
    • Nehemiah was appointed to be governor in the land of Judah.
    • His term ran from the twentieth year to the thirty-second year of Artaxerxes the king.
    • That term was twelve years.
    • Neither Nehemiah nor his brethren ate the food allowance of the governor.
15. 5:15
    • The former governors before Nehemiah laid a heavy burden on the people.
    • Those governors took from the people bread and wine.
    • Those governors took forty shekels of silver besides.
    • The servants of those governors also domineered over the people.
    • Nehemiah did not act in that way.
    • Nehemiah's reason for not acting so was the fear of God.
16. 5:16
    • Nehemiah persisted in the work of this wall.
    • Nehemiah and his household bought no land.
    • All of Nehemiah's servants were gathered there for the work.
17. 5:17
    • A hundred and fifty Jews and officials were at Nehemiah's table.
    • Also at his table were those who came to them from the nations around them.
18. 5:18
    • One ox was prepared for Nehemiah each day.
    • Six choice sheep were prepared each day.
    • Fowls were also prepared for him.
    • Once every ten days a large supply of all kinds of wine was provided.
    • Despite all this, Nehemiah did not demand the food allowance of the governor.
    • His reason was that the labor was heavy upon this people.
19. 5:19
    • Nehemiah asked his God to remember him for good.
    • He asked this according to all that he had done for this people.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

5:1

Throughout this chapter "brothers" and "fellow Jews" translate a word meaning fellow countrymen, not blood siblings. The setting is the small Persian province of Judah in the fifth century BC, where the returned exiles were living on subsistence farms while also being conscripted to rebuild Jerusalem's wall, time spent on the wall was time not spent on the harvest.

5:2

In 1611 English "corn" meant grain of any kind, normally wheat or barley. It did not mean maize, which the English of that time called Indian corn.

5:3

Putting up land as security was more serious than a modern mortgage. Under Israelite custom a family's fields were its inheritance, handed down and not meant to pass permanently out of the family; losing them meant losing the household's only means of support.

5:4

Judah was a province of the Persian Empire and owed an annual tax in silver, assessed on land. It had to be paid in coin or bullion, which farmers who lived off their own crops often did not have, hence the borrowing.

5:5

Israelite law allowed a person who could not pay a debt to hand over himself or his children as bond-servants until the debt was worked off. "Redeem" is the legal term for buying such a person back out of that service; here the families cannot do it because the fields that would have raised the money are already in the creditors' hands.

5:7

The nobles and officials were the leading landholding families and the province's administrators, the people with silver and grain to lend. Israelite law forbade charging a fellow Israelite interest on a loan made in need, while permitting it on loans to foreigners; that is the specific charge Nehemiah brings.

5:8

Jews taken as debt-slaves or captives and sold abroad could be bought out of slavery by their relatives or community, a recognized duty. Nehemiah's point is that the same community that has been spending its money buying people out is now, through its creditors, putting people in.

5:9

"Fear of God" here means living in awe of him and under his eye, not being frightened of him. The "shame" concern is about reputation: the surrounding peoples watching this struggling community would have a story to tell about how its own leaders treated it.

5:10

The Hebrew is compressed and disputed. It may mean that Nehemiah and his household have also been lending money and grain and will now stop charging interest, or that they have lent without interest and he is urging the others to follow suit.

5:11

The King James "the hundredth part" translates a Hebrew phrase read by most as the interest rate (one percent a month, or twelve percent a year, the standard charge in Persian-period loan contracts), so the demand is to refund the interest already collected. Some read it instead as a demand to hand back the loans themselves.

5:12

An oath was a religious act, so summoning the priests turned a verbal agreement into a formally binding vow made before God, with witnesses.

5:13

The loose fold of a robe gathered above the belt served as a pocket for carrying grain, coins, or small goods. Shaking it out empty was an acted-out curse: as the fold now holds nothing, so may the oath-breaker be turned out of his house and left holding nothing. "Amen" is a Hebrew word meaning roughly "truly" or "let it stand", the assembly's way of accepting the oath and its curse as binding on themselves.

5:14

Artaxerxes I ruled Persia; his twentieth year was about 445 BC and his thirty-second about 433 BC. A provincial governor was entitled to a fixed levy of food, wine, and silver from the people he governed, to support his household and official table, the "food allowance" Nehemiah declined to collect.

5:15

A shekel was a weight of silver, roughly two-fifths of an ounce (about eleven or twelve grams); forty shekels came to something close to a pound of silver. The text does not say whether this was charged daily, monthly, or yearly, but it was a substantial sum on top of the food and wine.

5:16

Officials in a famine were well placed to buy up land cheaply from desperate families, which is exactly what verse 3 describes happening. Nehemiah's point is that he refused to profit from the crisis he was governing.

5:17

Feeding officials and visiting dignitaries at his own table was part of a governor's job; the number indicates the size of the establishment Nehemiah was funding himself. The "nations around us" are the neighboring peoples and provinces (Samaria, Ammon, Ashdod and others) whose representatives had business with the province.

5:18

One ox and six sheep a day, plus poultry, is enough meat to feed several hundred people, which fits the numbers in the previous verse. Wine was delivered in bulk every ten days rather than daily.

5:19

"Remember me" is a set form of prayer, asking God to take account of what a person has done. Nehemiah uses it several times in the book, each time at the end of a section describing his own conduct.