# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1860_S323
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Fifteen Theses on Usury.                    323

...you practice, and over the blood that is shed in you. But do you
think your heart can endure it, or your hands hold out, at the time
when I deal with you? I, the LORD, have spoken it and will also do
it, and will scatter you among the heathen and disperse you into the
lands, and will make an end of your filthiness, so that you must be
held accursed among the heathen."

2. Proverbs 28:8: "He that by usury and unjust gain increaseth his
substance, he shall gather it for him that will pity the poor" — so he
does not enjoy his goods, according to the proverb: ill-gotten goods do
not come down to the third heir.

II. To lend at usury means, in Scripture, the lending of fungible
things — that is, of such things where it makes no difference whether
one receives back the very same specimen or another, so long as it is
of the same kind and quality — with the result that the lender, as
belonging to him, demands or takes more from the debtor than he lent;
and this quite generally, every such lending without distinction of
persons, whether creditor or debtor, and without regard to the value of
this "more." So too every so-called taking of interest on lent capital
is a lending at usury.

A. That the actions described in the thesis are what is meant by the
expressions, all signifying the same thing: to lend at usury, to take
usury, to practice usury, and the like, in Holy Scripture, is proved by
the following grounds:

1. Since Scripture gives no special explanation of the meaning of such
expressions, they must be taken in their generally current sense. That
the explanation given above describes the very action which all
historical peoples without exception, down to about the sixteenth
century, denoted by expressions corresponding to those named above, is
proved by all the writings of these peoples in which usury is spoken
of.

2. The root meaning of the words used in Holy Scripture to denote the
surplus demanded or taken over and above what was lent.*) These are
neschech, "the biting thing," that is, as the Mishnah, Bava Metzia 60b,
explains: neschech is what bites the giver and takes something of his
own from him; tarbith, "the increase," and τόκος, "the offspring," that
is, that which, of the debtor's substance,

*) Wucher [usury] = growth, fructus; Gothic vokrs; Old High German
wuochar; Middle High German wuocher; wuochern = to grow, to gain, to
take interest, foenerari. See J. Grimm, H. F. Maßmann, A. Ziemann and
others. —