Dual PanelNehemiah's social reforms
1THERE came a time when the common people, both men and women, raised a great outcry against their fellow-Jews.
2Some complained that they had to give their sons and daughters as pledges for food to eat to keep themselves alive;
3others that they were mortgaging their fields, vineyards, and homes to buy grain during the famine;
4still others that they were borrowing money on their fields and vineyards to pay the king's tax.
5“But”, they said, “our bodily needs are the same as other people's, our children are as good as theirs; yet here we are, forcing our sons and daughters into slavery. Some of our daughters are already enslaved, and there is nothing we can do, because our fields and vineyards now belong to others.”
6When I heard their outcry and the story they told, I was greatly incensed,
7but I controlled my feelings and reasoned with the nobles and the magistrates. I said to them, “You are holding your fellow-Jews as pledges for debt.” I rebuked them severely
8and said, “As far as we have been able, we have bought back our fellow-Jews who had been sold to foreigners; but you are now selling your own fellow-countrymen, and they will have to be bought back by us!” They were silent and had not a word to say.
9I went on, “What you are doing is wrong. You ought to live so much in the fear of our God that you are above reproach in the eyes of the nations who are our enemies.
10Speaking for myself, I and my kinsmen and the men under me are advancing them money and grain. Let us give up this taking of pledges for debt.
11This very day give them back their fields and vineyards, their olive groves and houses, as well as the income in money, in grain, new wine, and oil.”
12“We shall give them back”, they promised, “and exact nothing more. We shall do as you say.” Then after summoning the priests I put the offenders on oath to do as they had promised.
13Also I shook out the fold of my robe and said, “So may God shake out from house and property every man who fails to keep this promise. May he be shaken out like this and emptied!” All the assembled people said “Amen” and praised the LORD; and they did as they had promised.
14Moreover, from the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, the time when I was appointed governor in Judah, until his thirty-second year, a period of twelve years, neither I nor my kinsmen drew the governor's allowance of food.
15Former governors, my predecessors, had laid a heavy burden on the people, exacting from them a daily toll of bread and wine to the value of forty shekels of silver, while the men under them had also tyrannized over the people. But, because I feared God, I did not behave like this.
16Further, I put all my energy into working on the wall; I acquired no land, and all my men were gathered there for the work.
17At my table I had as guests a hundred and fifty Jews, including the magistrates, as well as men who came to us from the surrounding nations.
18The provision which had to be made each day was an ox and six prime sheep; fowls also were prepared for me, and every ten days skins of wine in abundance. Yet even so I did not draw the governor's allowance, because the people were so heavily burdened.
19God, remember me favourably for all that I have done for this people!