When you vow a vow to Yahweh your God, you shall not be slack to pay it, for Yahweh your God will surely require it of you; and it would be sin in you.
One may lend to a foreigner at interest
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
לַנָּכְרִי תַשִּׁיךְ וּלְאָחִיךָ לֹא תַשִּׁיךְ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו לבקש רבית מן העו"ג (* הראב"ד והרמב"ן משיגין עליו שאין זו מ"ע כלל, ובספרי אינו אלא לומר שכשמלוה לישראל ברבית עובר בלאו הבא מכלל עשה, וכן הסכמת כל הפוסקים:) ואז נלוה לו עד שלא נועילהו ולא נעזור לו ואפילו בענין שנהנה עמו כמו שהוזהרנו מעשות כך לישראל. והוא אמרו יתעלה לנכרי תשיך שבא בפירוש המקובל שזה מצות עשה. ולשון ספרי לנכרי תשיך מצות עשה ולאחיך לא תשיך מצות לא תעשה, ולמצוה זו גם כן תנאין דרבנן. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו בבבא מציעא. (כי תצא, הלכות מלוה ולוה פ"ה):
That is that He commanded us to demand interest from idolaters. (Raavad and Ramban disagree with him - that this is not a positive commandment at all. And the Sifrei [quoted below] is only saying that when one lends to a Jew with interest, one transgresses a negative commandment that is derived from a positive commandment. And this is the consensus of all the decisors.) And we may then lend to him. [This is so] that we not benefit him or help him; and even when [its] content is such that he gives it to him in such a way as was prohibited to do with a Jew. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "To a stranger, you may charge interest" (Deuteronomy 23:21), such that the received explanation comes [to teach] that this is a positive commandment. And the language of the Sifrei (Sifrei Devarim 263:1) is, "'To a stranger, you may charge interest' - is a positive commandment; 'but to your brother shall you not charge interest' - is a negative commandment." But this commandment also has rabbinic stipulations. And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in Bava Metzia. (See Parashat Ki Tetzei; Mishneh Torah, Creditor and Debtor 5).
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 flat, unconditional command
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, with modification
- Conservative Kept as an ethical principle
- Reform Not binding
- Reconstructionist Not binding
- Karaite As the catalog records it: permitted
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.
Philo of Alexandria
- De Virtutibus 82-87 reinterpreted it Philo's broader humanitarian framing extends the no-interest ethic toward kinsmen and the needy; the universalizing reading effectively backgrounds the foreigner exception rather than explicitly abrogating it
Josephus
- Ant. 4.266-270 reinterpreted it Josephus restates the prohibition on charging interest to fellow Hebrews/kinsmen without foregrounding the foreigner permission; the precise paragraph locus should be confirmed against the critical edition
The New Testament
- Luke 6:34-35 reinterpreted it exhortation to lend expecting nothing in return universalizes the fraternal ethic without the foreigner exception
The Church Fathers
- Ambrose, De Tobia reinterpreted it Ambrose's De Tobia is a sustained anti-usury treatise that condemns interest-taking broadly and reads scriptural interest provisions restrictively, effectively undercutting any sanction of lending at interest
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 2:275-279 set it in contrast
- Q 4:160-161 The catalog describes this reception as: thematic resonance
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 interest rates on grain and silver loans Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§88-91 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (1997)
- laws of eshnunna statutory fixed interest rates on silver and grain loans Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§18A-21 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (1997)
- code of hammurabi Old Babylonian interest-rate regulation applying uniform rate caps to all borrowers regardless of social category, without the Deuteronomic dual-track distinction between covenant-community (interest-free) and foreigner (interest-permitted) — the Israelite permission for foreigner-interest maintains the default ANE practice while the intra-community prohibition is the innovation Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§88-96 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (Scholars Press, 1997)
- laws of eshnunna Fixed statutory interest rates without any distinction between loans to community members versus outsiders, providing structural contrast with the Deuteronomic dual-track system that applies the prohibition only within the covenant community Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§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.
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Article 26
This framework classifies the relation as a substantive tension.
ICCPR Article 26 guarantees equal protection of the law without discrimination on grounds including national origin; a legal norm permitting (or requiring) differential interest rates based on whether the borrower belongs to the covenant community creates a formal ethnicity-based distinction in the terms of a commercial transaction, in substantive tension with this non-discrimination principle.
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Article 7
This framework classifies the relation as a substantive tension.
UDHR Article 7 affirms equal protection of the law and protection against discrimination; the dual-track interest system, which assigns more favorable lending terms exclusively to co-religionists and permits exploitative rates for foreigners, is in substantive tension with the equality norm, even though the UDHR does not directly govern private commercial conduct.