Verses 1-5

Nehemiah 5:1-5. The people complain of their debt, mortgage, and bondage.

there was a great cry of the people  …  against their brethren — Such a crisis in the condition of the Jews in Jerusalem - fatigued with hard labor and harassed by the machinations of restless enemies, the majority of them poor, and the bright visions which hope had painted of pure happiness on their return to the land of their fathers being unrealized - must have been very trying to their faith and patience. But, in addition to these vexatious oppressions, many began to sink under a new and more grievous evil. The poor made loud complaints against the rich for taking advantage of their necessities, and grinding them by usurious exactions. Many of them had, in consequence of these oppressions, been driven to such extremities that they had to mortgage their lands and houses to enable them to pay the taxes to the Persian government, and ultimately even to sell their children for slaves to procure the means of subsistence. The condition of the poorer inhabitants was indeed deplorable; for, besides the deficient harvests caused by the great rains (Ezra 10:9; also Haggai 1:6-11), a dearth was now threatened by the enemy keeping such a multitude pent up in the city, and preventing the country people bringing in provisions.

Verses 6-12

Nehemiah 5:6-19. The usurers rebuked.

I was very angry when I heard their cry and these words — When such disorders came to the knowledge of the governor, his honest indignation was roused against the perpetrators of the evil. Having summoned a public assembly, he denounced their conduct in terms of just severity. He contrasted it with his own in redeeming with his money some of the Jewish exiles who, through debt or otherwise, had lost their personal liberty in Babylon. He urged the rich creditors not only to abandon their illegal and oppressive system of usury, but to restore the fields and vineyards of the poor, so that a remedy might be put to an evil the introduction of which had led to much actual disorder, and the continuance of which would inevitably prove ruinous to the newly restored colony, by violating the fundamental principles of the Hebrew constitution. The remonstrance was effectual. The conscience of the usurious oppressors could not resist the touching and powerful appeal. With mingled emotions of shame, contrition, and fear, they with one voice expressed their readiness to comply with the governor‘s recommendation. The proceedings were closed by the parties binding themselves by a solemn oath, administered by the priests, that they would redeem their pledge, as well as by the governor invoking, by the solemn and significant gesture of shaking a corner of his garment, a malediction on those who should violate it. The historian has taken care to record that the people did according to this promise.

Verse 14

Moreover from the time that I was appointed … I and my brethren have not eaten the bread of the governor — We have a remarkable proof both of the opulence and the disinterestedness of Nehemiah. As he declined, on conscientious grounds, to accept the lawful emoluments attached to his government, and yet maintained a style of princely hospitality for twelve years out of his own resources, it is evident that his office of cup-bearer at the court of Shushan must have been very lucrative.

Verse 15

the former governors … had taken … bread and wine, besides forty shekels of silver — The income of Eastern governors is paid partly in produce, partly in money. “Bread” means all sorts of provision. The forty shekels of silver per day would amount to a yearly salary of about $9,000.

Verse 17

Moreover there were at my table an hundred and fifty of the Jews — In the East it has been always customary to calculate the expense of a king‘s or grandee‘s establishment, not by the amount of money disbursed, but by the quantity of provisions consumed (see 1 Kings 4:22; 1 Kings 18:19; Ecclesiastes 5:11).