What Does Leviticus 25:37 Mean?
Your silver you shall not give him for a bite, and your food you shall not give for growth.
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
Thou shalt not give him thy money upon usury, nor lend him thy victuals for increase.THE KEY
The Hebrew word rendered “usury” grows from the verb “to bite,” so the verse names interest as provision with teeth.
THE MEANING
Need is met without turning the help into a growing claim against the person receiving it. The verse pairs money charged with interest and food charged for increase, showing that extraction can attach itself to either kind of provision. It exposes the difference between giving support and making another person’s scarcity reproduce itself.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a loan remains generous when the recipient’s need is made to cost more over time.
THE ROOT
נֶשֶׁךְ
neshekh
GROWS FROM
נָשַׁךְ
nashakh
to bite
נֶשֶׁךְ (neshekh), rendered “usury,” comes from נָשַׁךְ (nashakh), “to bite.” The wording lets the charge appear as a bite taken from what the borrower needs, revealing the felt action beneath the financial term.
ALSO GROWS
nashakh: to bite
נָשַׁךְ
The verb makes the noun’s image bodily: the charge is described through the act of biting.
neshikhah: a bite; biting
נְשִׁיכָה
This related noun carries the same biting image, keeping the word’s physical force close to its financial use.
מַרְבִּית
marbit
GROWS FROM
רָבָה
rabah
to become many; to increase
“growth” in this verse is marbit. The verse places increase beside the bite: the money charge takes, while the return demanded from food makes the amount grow. Together, the words show how either kind of provision can become a claim that expands against someone’s need.
ALSO GROWS
rabah: to become many; to increase
רָבָה
This verb names the growth carried by the demand for more than the food lent.
hirbah: to make many; to multiply
הִרְבָּה
This causative form shows increase as something brought about, illuminating how a debt can be made to grow.
THE PATTERN
Provision preserves life when it does not become a claim that compounds another person’s need.
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 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.The Hebrew word translated “usury” is again נֶשֶׁךְ (neshekh), from the root meaning “to bite.” The verse joins refusing that bite with steadiness: what does not feed on another’s need remains unshaken.
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