# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1864_S178
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

178 Martin Chemnitz on Usury.

teaches, in his marginal glosses, that distinction in these words: Some are teaching-laws, which show what the will [of God] is, Romans 12:2; some are defense-laws, in that in political constitutions much evil is tolerated so that nothing worse may happen. In the same way the passage concerning usury is explained, Matt. 5:42, Luke 6:35. For the Deuterotae gave this interpretation: since Moses, in the laws concerning lending and usury, makes a distinction between neighbors or brothers and foreigners, the will of God is satisfied if only friends are supported by the loving service of lending, while it is no sin if others are drained by usury. But Christ, who was sent not to be a political lawgiver, but to instruct the conscience before God through the revelation of his eternal and unchangeable will, says that in the tribunal of conscience that distinction between neighbor and foreigner — a distinction which has its place in civil society — does not hold; but rather: Give to everyone who asks of you, whether he be friend or enemy. And concerning that ordinary lending, whether it be done to the poor or the rich, to friends or enemies, he says: "Hoping for nothing again." Just as the law of the bill of divorce has also been abolished politically, so the same must hold of the provision concerning usury, as is evident from what we have said. — I have remarked on this at somewhat greater length concerning the passage Deuteronomy 23, because this explanation sheds light on many questions, and it was necessary first to show that there is no case in which Scripture approves of usury, in the conscience before God, as a good, godly, and permissible thing.

As for the remaining passages, Deuteronomy 5:6, 28:12, the answer is easy from the manner of the expression. For the text does not say that usury, which is elsewhere so harshly condemned, is a divine blessing. For the word "usury" occurs in neither of the two passages, but rather "Abat" and "Lavah," which mean "to lend," so that the sense of this is: through God's blessing your affairs will stand so prosperously that they will not only suffice for your own needs and those of your household, but that you will also, without harm to yourself, be able to support foreign nations by the service of lending.

Since we have now shown that the Word of God does not, in any case, approve of usury in the tribunal of conscience before God, the testimonies of Scripture concerning it are now to be noted — not what Moses judged in the political court, but what God, before his judgment seat, judges concerning usury. Here it must be noted that Scripture does not merely rebuke usury in the way that God's Law punishes many faults even in the saints in this life; rather, the severity of the words is to be weighed in each individual testimony in which usury is condemned. Deuteronomy 23:19: You shall not charge your brother usury, etc., but shall lend him, without usury, whatever he needs, so that the LORD your God may bless you in all that you undertake in the land, etc. Thus the