What Does Leviticus 25:36 Mean?
Take no bite from him, nor growth; but stand in awe of your God, that your brother may live with you.
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
Take thou no usury of him, or increase: but fear thy God; that thy brother may live with thee.THE KEY
The Hebrew word for usury is a bite, so the verse measures a loan by whether the brother receiving it can still live beside the lender.
THE MEANING
Your brother’s need is not a place for your increase to feed. Awe of God places a boundary around what can be taken, protecting the life you share. The measure named here is that your brother lives with you.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that another person’s urgent need is fair ground for your increase.
THE ROOT
נֶשֶׁךְ
neshekh
GROWS FROM
נשך
n-sh-kh
to bite
The word for interest grows from the verb “to bite,” picturing an extraction that fastens into the borrower. The verse places that bite beside a limit, then names the life it protects: a brother living alongside you.
ALSO GROWS
nashakh: to bite
נָשַׁךְ
This verb carries the physical image hidden inside the financial term.
neshekh: interest, usury
נֶשֶׁךְ
This is the verse’s word for the added charge, carrying the root’s image of a bite.
תַּרְבִּית
tarbit
GROWS FROM
רבה
r-b-h
to become many; to increase
Tarbit names an addition or increase, from a root of becoming many. Paired with “bite,” it names both the extraction and the growth it produces; the brother’s life sets the boundary on that increase.
ALSO GROWS
ravah: to become many; to increase
רָבָה
This verb shows the growth carried in the word for increase.
harbeh: much; many
הַרְבֵּה
This form makes the root’s sense of abundance visible.
חֵי
chei
GROWS FROM
חיה
ḥ-y-h
to live; to be alive
The verb names being alive, and its noun chayyim means “life.” Joined to “with you,” life here is shared presence: the stated outcome is a brother who continues to live alongside you.
ALSO GROWS
chai: living; alive
חַי
This form describes the state the verse protects.
chayyim: life; living
חַיִּים
This noun makes explicit the life named in the verse’s final clause.
THE PATTERN
A lending relationship preserves shared life when the lender refuses to turn need into a source of gain.
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.He does not give his silver at interest, nor take a gift against the clean one. He who does these will not totter for the ages.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
He who multiplies his wealth by bite and by growth shall gather it for the one who favors the emptied.Proverbs uses the same Hebrew roots for “usury” and “increase,” placing the bite and its growth together again. It then turns to the poor, opening Leviticus’s concern for a brother’s continued life into a question of what accumulated gain ultimately serves.
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