# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1864_S172
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

172 Martin Chemnitz on Usury.

...affairs now stand, could not exist without usury; therefore, they say, if in the exacting of usury the civil ordinances were kept, it could be done without violating conscience. Others, however, tear apart, under the name of usury, all lawful contracts, and condemn honest gain. We shall therefore gather together the principal heads of this disputation, as is done in the schools, and divide them into a number of parts.

1. It is not without use to consider the names. The Latins call usury Usura, for this reason, that on account of the usus (use) of the borrowed sum something is added to the capital. It is also called Foenus, some say, as though it were the Foetus (the offspring, that which is generated), just as the Greeks call it τόκος, whose etymology Aristotle, in the first book of the Politics, chapter 7, explains to mean that in usury money is not employed according to the use for which it was invented, namely as a medium of exchange in contracts, but rather generates something like itself, namely money — whereas this does not correspond to the nature of money. Suidas cites from Aristophanes: "Usury is such a creature, and indeed an irrational one, which monthly and daily generates ever more money in the passing course of time." But the Hebrew language has three very remarkable and expressive names. The first is Naeschech, whose root carries the meaning of biting and gnawing. For with this comparison greed is described in Micah 3:3: "You eat the flesh of my people, and when you have flayed off their skin, you break their bones as well." But Naeschech is almost always used of a snake's bite, which does harm not so much by gnawing as by its venom. The ground of the name is very apt. For a snake's bite does not at once cut off and sever the limb, but infects it with its venom, so that it is gradually and slowly consumed. So usury gnaws away, little by little, at a man's substance, although at first one does not notice it; and likewise it is a poison to the usurer himself, according to the saying of Proverbs 28:8: "Whoever increases his wealth by usury and interest gathers it for the benefit of the poor." The second name is Nassa, which has the meaning of laying a burden or load upon someone, of falling upon him. In these words exceedingly remarkable pictures of usurers are set forth. For in Deuteronomy 24:10–11 God commands the wealthier to take hold of or lay hold on their needy brothers, already sinking down through poverty; but they instead fall upon those who have already fallen and lie on the ground, and press them down yet further by laying a burden on them; or it is thereby meant to signify that, while pretending to support and raise up the fallen by their lending, they secretly bite them, so that, before they notice it, they are entirely gnawed away. Chrysostom expounds that comparison very beautifully on the fifth chapter of Matthew, thus: "Usury is like the bite of a viper. For whoever has been bitten by a viper falls asleep with a pleasant sensation, and through