Nehemiah 5:3 Commentary and Bible Study

Their small holdings, their houses, were mortgaged to those from whom they borrowed money in order to buy essential food, in order to survive. This had probably been going on for years, but now it has reached a climax. No doubt there been an undercurrent of complaints and grumbling, but now it seems to become something approaching a riot. There is a great demonstration and an outcry. We can imagine how it may have been conducted, but the people are making their feelings known. Others spoke of the hardship they had faced in paying the king’s tribute. This is the king of Persia to whom tribute was due since Jerusalem was part of a vassal state ruled over by Persia. Ezra 4:13 refers to this tribute. Artaxerxes had made the priests and Levites and ministers in the temple exempt from this tax (Ezra 7:24), but others had to pay. In order to do so, they had again mortgaged their lands and their vineyards. The fault among the Jews was not that this tribute had to be paid – they could do little about this. The fault was that under such difficult circumstances the rich were taking advantage of the dire circumstances of the poor and adding to their burden by loaning money to pay the tribute at exorbitant rates. They were charging interest on what was borrowed. Then comes the appeal of verse 5: ‘Yet now our flesh is as the flesh of our brethren.’ We are flesh and blood, just like the nobles, just like the family chiefs. ‘Our children are the same as their children, and, lo, we bring into bondage’, to service, ‘our sons and our daughters, and some of our daughters are brought onto bondage already.’ They don't seem to have a heart, is the implication. Sold to the Samaritan nations round about, to the nobles themselves. ‘Neither is it in our power to redeem them;’ to buy them back, ‘for other men have our lands and vineyards.’ They are mortgaged to the hilt, so that the people have reached such a point. It's amazing this hasn't been protested about bitterly before. Perhaps it is just the arrival of Nehemiah. He has been there some time, but now perhaps they sense that they have a sympathetic governor, and that has encouraged them to bring this grievance into the open.