and my wrath will grow hot, and I will kill you with the sword; and your wives shall be widows, and your children fatherless.
To lend to the poor without interest
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
אִם־כֶּסֶף תַּלְוֶה אֶת־עַמִּי אֶת־הֶעָנִי עִמָּךְ לֹא־תִהְיֶה לוֹ כְּנֹשֶׁה לֹא־תְשִׂימוּן עָלָיו נֶשֶׁךְ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו להלוות לעני להקל לו מעניו ולהרחיב לו, וזה מצוה היותר חזקה ויותר מחוייבת מכל מצות צדקה, כי מי שנתגלה ונתבזה לשאול מיד האנשים אין צרת עניו כמו צרת המסתתר שירצה להעזר עד שלא יתגלה עניו ויתבזה. והצווי במצוה זו הוא אמרו יתעלה אם כסף תלוה את עמי. ולשון מכילתא כל אם שבתורה רשות חוץ משלשה וזה אחד מהם, ואמרו אם כסף חובה אתה אומר חובה או אינו אלא רשות תלמוד לומר העבט תעביטנו חובה ולא רשות. וכבר התבארו דיני מצוה זו בכתובות. (ואלה המשפטים, הלכות מלוה ולוה פ"א):
That is that He commanded us to lend to the poor, to lighten his poverty from upon him and to ease [his condition]. And this commandment is stronger and more obligatory than the whole commandment of charity. For the anguish of one who has [already] been revealed and disgraced to ask from people is not the same as the one who hides that he needs to be helped, so that his poverty not be revealed and he be disgraced. And the statement of this commandment is His, may He be exalted, saying, "If (Im) you lend money to My people" (Exodus 22:24). And the language of the Mekhilta (Mekhilta d'Rabbi Yishmael 20:22:1) is, "Every, if, in the Torah connotes optionality, except for three." And this is one of them. And they said, "'If money,' is obligatory. You say it is obligatory, but perhaps it is optional. [Hence] we learn to say, 'and you shall surely lend him.' It is obligatory, not optional." And the laws of this commandment have already been explained in Ketubot. (See Parashat Shoftim; Mishneh Torah, Creditor and Debtor 1.)
Hebrew: Sefer HaMitzvot, Warsaw 1883 (public domain). English: Sefaria Edition, trans. Rabbi Francis Nataf, 2021 (CC0). Via Sefaria; translator’s footnotes omitted.
Literary form: a case law — "if X, then Y"
Applicability
How the catalog describes where and when this commandment applies. These are independent descriptions, not a verdict on which laws still count.
- Recorded as practiced today
Classical halakhic consequences
The consequences the classical halakhah attaches to this commandment, grouped by who imposes them. Where a category has none recorded, that absence is itself meaningful.
Imposed by a court
No court-imposed penalty is recorded.
At the hands of Heaven
No divinely-imposed consequence is recorded.
Ritual remedy
No ritual remedy is recorded.
How the streams of Judaism treat this commandment
The streams of Judaism read the same commandment differently — an ongoing plurality, not a ranking. Each position below is reported as the catalog records it; none is presented as the correct one.
- Orthodox Binding
- Conservative Binding, with modification
- Reform Kept as an ethical principle
- Reconstructionist Kept as an ethical principle
- Karaite Binding
24 of 613 commandments have been examined in depth so far — this one is queued.
How later traditions received this commandment
How later traditions read or reworked this commandment, each attributed to its own voice. The catalog’s own classification of each reception is shown as it records it, never adopted as GEBible’s.
Rabbinic aggadah
- Exodus Rabbah 31:1-13 expanded it homiletically
- Leviticus Rabbah 3:1 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 2.71-78 affirmed it
- De Virtutibus 82-87 rationalized it
Josephus
- Antiquities 4.266 affirmed it
The New Testament
- Luke 6:34-35 reinterpreted it Jesus enjoins lending 'expecting nothing in return' (mēden apelpizontes), a homiletic intensification of the lending ethic
- Matthew 25:27 / Luke 19:23 carried a parallel Parable of the talents references interest-bearing deposit, using tokos ('interest') and trapezitai ('bankers'), without ethical comment, reflecting commercial banking practice
The Church Fathers
- Ambrose, De Tobia 15.51 reinterpreted it
- Basil of Caesarea, Homilia in Psalmum 14 (on Ps 15:5) expanded it homiletically
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 2:275-279 carried a parallel
- Q 3:130 carried a parallel
Beside the older legal codes of its world
The commandment set beside the ancient Near-Eastern legal collections scholars compare it to — a descriptive comparison, not a claim of dependence.
- code of hammurabi regulation of maximum interest rates on grain and silver loans Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast §§88-96 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (1997)
- laws of eshnunna fixed interest rates for silver and grain loans Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast §§18A, 20-21 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (1997)
- edict of ammisaduqa royal debt-remission cancelling outstanding consumption-loan obligations and arrears Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§ on debt arrears and remission Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (1997)
- code of hammurabi Old Babylonian interest-rate regulation capping grain loans at 33⅓% and silver loans at 20% annually, treating interest as a normal commercial activity requiring rate-caps rather than prohibition — the Israelite positive obligation to lend without interest to the poor stands in explicit contrast to this normalizing framework Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast §§88-96 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (Scholars Press, 1997)
- laws of eshnunna Old Babylonian fixed interest rates for silver and grain loans, establishing rate regulation as the default legal approach to lending, with no concept of an obligation to lend interest-free to the needy Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast §§18A-21 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (Scholars Press, 1997)
Where this commandment meets modern human-rights frameworks
One modern normative lens, attributed to it — not GEBible’s assessment. Each row names the framework it measures against and the catalog’s own classification of the relation.
This framework catalogues tensions; it records agreement in only one of its entries. The near-total tension rate is the shape of the instrument, not a finding.
No tension with the catalogued modern frameworks is recorded here.