What Does Exodus 22:25 Mean?
If you lend silver to any of my people who is bent low beside you, you shall not be to him as one who bites, nor lay the bite upon him.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
If thou lend money to any of my people that is poor by thee, thou shalt not be to him as an usurer, neither shalt thou lay upon him usury.THE KEY
The Hebrew word translated “usury” carries the image of a bite: the verse names profit taken from a poor neighbor as something that wounds.
THE MEANING
When someone poor is beside you, this verse describes a loan as a relationship that must not become predatory. It forbids turning that person’s need into an added charge that takes from them. The neighbor stands beside you, not beneath you as a source of gain.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that whatever a lender can extract from someone in need is simply the price of help. This verse names that extraction as a bite.
THE ROOT
נֶשֶׁךְ
neshekh
GROWS FROM
נשך
n-sh-k
To bite.
“the bite” in this verse is neshekh. The Hebrew word for “usury” carries the same root as “to bite.” English can make the charge sound like a neutral financial category; the root shows the image beneath it: taking a bite from someone already in need.
ALSO GROWS
nashakh: To bite.
נָשַׁךְ
This is the verb from the same root; Numbers 21:6 uses it when serpents bite the people.
neshekh: Interest, usury.
נֶשֶׁךְ
The noun gives a demanded increase the image of a bite taken from the borrower.
THE PATTERN
A loan to someone in need is treated as aid, not turned into a means of taking more from them.
Take no bite from him, nor growth; but stand in awe of your God, that your brother may live with you.You shall not lend to your brother at usury, usury of silver, usury of food, usury of anything that is lent at usury.But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing in return. And your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Highest, for he is kind to the unthankful and to the evil.THE THREAD
And the LORD sent burning serpents among the people, and they bit the people, and many of Israel died.The verb translated “bit” comes from the same נשך root as the word for “usury” here. That shared root gives the charge a physical image: like a bite, it takes something from a person who is already exposed.
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