Kee Tetze
Deuteronomy 21:10-25:19
Isaiah 54:1-10
“You shall not arrange interest for your brother on money or on food, interest on anything which can bring about interest. For the stranger you shall arrange interest…” (Deut. 23:20-21).
These verses appear parallel to the prohibition in Leviticus 25:36-37, where the Bible adds a synonym for interest. The word neshekh (interest) in Deuteronomy has a root meaning “to bite,” but in Leviticus we find in addition the word tarbit, from a root meaning “to increase.”
Perhaps the text in Leviticus looks at the transaction from the point of view of the lender, to whom the interest-bearing loan promises increased wealth, while the verse in Deuteronomy looks from the point of view of the borrower, who feels the painful bite of interest payments.
The earliest rabbis understand that the verses in Leviticus prohibit the lender from charging interest (from accepting increase), and the verses in Deuteronomy prohibit the borrower from paying interest (from getting bitten) (Sifrei; Sefer HaHinnukh 572). According to the Torah, not only the lender but even the borrower bears responsibility.
Folklore treats the borrower as a victim and blames the lender. For what?
At first glance, for engaging in an inherently evil transaction. Repugnance at money-lending runs very deep. In English, “usury,” making use of money, originally meant lending at any rate of interest.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, an English poet in 1303 asserts that whoever enjoys usury, on a spiritual plane, “he is a thief.” Others deserve their bread, which they earn by the sweat of their brows, but the idle usurer deserves nothing.
So it seemed to the early medieval church, which effectively suppressed money-lending in Europe. The Muslim world, too, has prohibitions against lending at interest. The Sefer HaHinnukh explains the Torah laws of interest “so that one not swallow the substance of his fellow, without the other sensing it at all, until he finds his house empty of all goods, for this is the way of interest” (Sefer HaHinnukh 68).
But if lending at interest amounts to swindling, it seems odd for the Torah to forbid the actions of the dupe as well as the fraud. And why then does the Torah, in the very next verse, permit lending at interest to the stranger?
Ramban (1195-1270) in his commentary on the verse in Deuteronomy asks that the Torah should forbid us from engaging in evil acts with strangers as well as with our fellow Jews. Indeed it does give permission “with regard to robbery and theft, as the Rabbis have said, ‘Theft from an idolater is forbidden'” (Bava Kama 113b).
So Ramban presents a different analysis: “Borrowing for interest, which was agreed upon by both parties and is done voluntarily, was forbidden by the Torah only because of brotherliness and kindness.”
Ramban understands lending at interest as a legitimate economic activity, undertaken willing by both parties because they see it as mutually beneficial. For this reason, the Torah permits us to borrow or lend at interest with non-Jews.
However, people who feel a real bond with each other may choose to lend and borrow without interest, as an embodiment of their affection. The Torah, as Ramban understands it, demands that we treat other Jews with this special level of affection and lend to them freely without interest as if they were our dear friends or family members. It permits us to have ordinary commercial relations with others.
Ramban concludes this entry with an elegant observation. After prohibiting interest bearing loans, the Torah says, “in order that the Lord your God shall bless you in all your endeavors in the land which you are about to enter to inherit” (Deut. 23:21).
Ramban observes that the Torah invokes this blessing not for abstaining from robbery, theft and fraud, but only with regard to acts of kindness and love. Lending without interest, as Hebrew Free Loan Associations do in San Francisco and around the world, amounts to an act of lovingkindness.