An excerpt from, "Usury and Cosmic Personalism" By R. J. Rushdoony, Chalcedon Foundation, December 15, 2009:
The modern system of commercial credit is, like the Babylonian, a form of slavery. The Civil War saw the abolition of limited private slavery, involving three million people, and the imposition of slavery to the state and the furtherance of slavery to financial interests. Some people are by nature slaves, demanding total security of a master, employer, or of the state. But to impose slavery on our children is no less a sin.
The Sabbath and Jubilee Years again are central. These were types, as was the weekly Sabbath, of the restoration of paradise and the work of Christ. Man ceases from working because he knows it is God's work of grace that saves him. All days of rest in other religions are imitations of biblical faith. No day of rest existed otherwise. Other religions, Babylonian and Pharisaic, are in essence and practice works religions. Christianity, as was true Old Testament faith, is not; hence, it rests in worship to indicate that salvation is not man's work. The rest of the land involved confidence that God's bounty would more than replenish what was lost by man's inactivity. DeTocqueville commented on the importance of the Christian Sabbath in the American republic. The decline of that day of rest has gone hand in hand with the rise of a works religion and a credit economy which mortgages man's future. The deeper significance of this external parallel is that civil slavery is the analogue of spiritual blindness and bondage. But, "If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek may face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land."
The difference between the Babylonian and biblical outlooks has been cited; it remains now to develop it briefly. Economic man had high authority in Babylonian culture. War was seen in essentially economic terms and as a means to economic power. To the Babylonians of Nebuchadnezzar's day, "What mattered to them, so far as the king's victories were concerned, was not the glory of battle so much as the fact that it was a means of consolidating their economic supremacy."
The roots, however, lie deeper, back into the Old Babylonian period of Hammurabi and earlier. There was a class known as tamkaru (singular tamkarum). The word tamkarum can be translated as merchant, broker, merchant banker, money-lender, and government agent.[31] Fulfilling all these functions, he was an able instrument of imperial power, in that, long before any armies marched, he had bound foreign powers to himself both hand and foot. This same policy characterized Assyria, and Nahum cited as a central sin of Assyria before God that it had "multiplied merchants above the stars of heaven,"[32] i.e., exercised economic slavery in one area after another. The Babylonians were money-lenders not only out of dedicated policy but with fervor, zest, and relish. One of their proverbs expresses this outlook clearly: "The giving of a loan is like making love; the returning of a loan is like having a son born."[33] They were thus a breed of proud and happy Shylocks. Their whole world of business moved in terms of credit financing, and their whole concept of social control and of imperialism rested on usury. It is not surprising that Babylon the Great, the harlot, is the type in Revelation of the one-world order which shall seduce all nations.
For biblical economy, loans are not the basis of normal operation as with Babylon, but of abnormal circumstances. As such, and definitely as such, they have their place, but they operate in terms of implicit as well as explicit restrictions. Two kinds of loans were recognized: to the believer without usury but with security, and to the unbeliever, with usury and security. But in both instances the presupposition is that something real, in goods or in money, is transferred, a tangible asset involving only the two parties to the contract. Modern banking, however, is radically different. Banks "create" money by fiat and by the unilateral action of simply recording a loan and a deposit on their books. The consequence is, not the personal and limited action of a biblical loan, but inflation, the dilution of the prior relationship of money units to total goods and services. As a result, there is a dilution of all money, and such "loans" mean an element of robbery in that they reduce the value of all other money units previously in existence. Fractional reserves and modern central banking (i.e., the Federal Reserve System) are modern applications of the old Babylonian principles and are equally conducive to the dream of empire.
Prior to the introduction of central banking, the ability to create fiat money was relatively limited, and it depended in large measure on the confidence of individuals in the local bank. Today, the instrument of control has passed to the larger units, and the Federal Reserve System, its directors and stockholders, the Treasury Department, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and other agencies are engaged in manipulating the money supply. In 1959, "Federal Reserve notes comprised 90% of paper money in circulation and 84% of total money in circulation."
Biblical law is hostile to this pyramiding of credit. It is premised on immediate responsibility, whereas the Babylonian and modern systems evade immediate responsibility. Today, the law penalizes the individual with almost unlimited liabilities, so that every kind of insurance is necessary for the individual as homeowner, driver, and parent (in the event that his child blackens a bully's eyes). On the other hand, corporate irresponsibility is fostered by limited liability laws which, over a period of time, separate property from control, ownership from management, and management from responsibility. Social irresponsibility is thus furthered, and the responsible man hamstrung. Biblical faith declares that a personal God created every fact in the universe, so that every fact is a personal fact. Impersonality is thus ruled out of the universe. As we deal with ourselves and everything under the sun, we deal also with our very personal Creator. Any attempt to introduce impersonality into the universe is to that degree an attempt to separate the universe from the government of God. The impersonal economics of Babylon and of today are thus anti-biblical and are attempts to substitute fiat "creations" of man for the absolute government of God. As such, they incur the wrath of God, whose advance judgment Scripture proclaims: "Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen... And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her..." In terms of this comes the summons, "Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues."
In conclusion, in Scripture interest was legal for loans which were not charity loans. Debt was not to be a normal thing or a way of life. Debt was an emergency, or "need," matter, not normally a consumption loan, and only a severely conservative production loan.
An excerpt from, "Understanding What God Commanded Moses About Usury" By Dr. Chad Brand, Institute For Faith, Work & Economics, March 15, 2023:
In the Ancient Near East, lending was very common, as attested by surviving evidence from the time. In Babylon, it was common to lend food or produce at thirty-three and one-third percent interest and to lend money (silver bullion) at twenty percent. In Nuzi in the same period, some loans were made at fifty percent, and there were specific regulations in many lands about what that interest could be.
In a detailed study of such Ancient Near East practices, one scholar has demonstrated that the interest on such loans would be taken out at the time the loan was made, not at the time of repayment. Then, if the loan were not repaid on time, further interest would be charged. Such rates were injurious and subjected many of those who acquired them to be perpetually in the underclass. This was not to be the case for Israel, or so the Lord intended. God’s instructions to Moses here do not simply limit the rate of interest on loans to other Israelites to a moderate amount, but prohibit any interest on such loans. Theologian Walter Kaiser said in his commentary on Exodus, “This law is not dealing with ‘usury’ in our modern sense of the word, i.e., exorbitant or illegal interest, but interest of any kind to a fellow Israelite.”
The significance of this fact is highlighted by the fact that while many earlier portions of the Covenant Code were given in the third person (such as, “if a man seduces a virgin . . . he must pay the bride-price,” 22:16), beginning in verse 22 God the grammar now shifts to the second person; it is now not merely “he,” but “you” and “I.” “If you lend money to one of my people among you who is needy, do not be like a moneylender. . . . When he cries out to me, I will hear, for I am compassionate” (22:25, 27).
This is obviously a matter that the Lord took with great seriousness. The Hebrew word translated “usury” in the KJV (“interest” in many recent translations) is nesek. The medieval Jewish commentator Rashi (Solomon ben Isaac) pointed out that this Hebrew root meant “to bite,” and commented, “it resembles the bite of a snake . . . inflicting a small wound in a person’s foot which he does not feel at first, but all at once it swells, and distends the whole body up to the top of his head. So it is with interest.” Brevard Childs, who quotes Rashi, and other modern commentators concur with that interpretation of the word.
In a similar way my book Super Imperialism in 1972 was viewed by the U.S. Defense Department as a success story about how U.S. foreign policy was obtaining a free international financial ride. Going off gold in 1971 made the dollar the basic medium in which foreign central banks held their monetary reserves. These international reserves were funding the balance-of-payments costs of U.S. military spending abroad. The right wing celebrated this finding, while neither the left wing nor foreign victims criticized dollarization of the world financial system.My warnings of a broad Latin American default created a backlash of denial I became a balance-of-payments advisor to Canada in the late 1970s and an advisor to UNITAR, the United Nations Institute for Training and Research, which published my papers on why Latin America could not afford to pay its debts. I presented these findings at a large UNITAR meeting in Mexico City. The U.S. rapporteur deliberately misrepresented my talk, saying that I had explained how Third World countries could pay their debts with U.S. aid. I stood up and said that this was a falsification of what I and other members of my U.S. delegation (including Bob Fitch and Loren Goldner) believed. I demanded an apology from Luis Echeverria, who had convened the meeting. There was pandemonium and I walked out in protest. The Russian delegate came outside and said that I had taken over the conference by saying the unspeakable.The “unspeakable” happened pretty quickly. The Italian funders of the UNITAR group insisted that it stop publishing my warnings about Third World debt. I realized that the idea that countries could not pay their debt was really important. It was not unthinkable at all, but it was unspeakable in polite company. In 1982, Mexico defaulted on its bonds, triggering the Latin American “debt bomb.”I set about studying debt problems and cancellations in the ancient world. When William Shakespeare wrote plays about the kind of social and political intrigues that he found in England, he often placed their action in Italy or some other foreign land so as not to touch a sensitive domestic nerve. A similar logic led me to put the debt problem in its long perspective by writing a history of debt through the ages. I thought that people would be more willing to accept the idea that cancelling debts was needed to avoid economic polarization and impoverishment if they could see how societies through the ages had dealt with the problem of debts exceeding the ability of large parts of the economy to pay. Around 1980-1981, I began to draft this history. I thought that if this logic were accepted for the past, the implications for today would become less unthinkable.I looked for examples of early recognition that if debts couldn’t be paid on a widespread basis, some authority was needed to write them down, or else a creditor oligarchy would emerge to polarize and ultimately impoverish the economy. Such polarization and impoverishment is clear enough in the modern world. If governments don’t write down Latin America’s debts, for example, the continent’s debtor countries will be obliged to go to the IMF, World Bank and the U.S. State Department. These institutions will insist that the debtor economy would have to “stabilize” its exchange rate by selling off its land, mineral rights and public infrastructure to foreign investors, using the sales proceeds to pay foreign creditors. That will strip away the assets and patrimony of debtor countries.It was fairly easy to go back to the 19th century and see the financial ruin of Persia and Egypt as a result of debts owed to European bankers. I began taking notes going back to the medieval times and the Crusades with its revival of war debts, and to Rome and Greece such as Solon’s seisachtheia of 594 BC, and to the Biblical Jubilee year. In looking through this literature I found scattered references to earlier Near Eastern debt cancellations.To trace down these references I began to read about Mesopotamia. Most of the writing was in French and German. I had studied linguistics at the University of Chicago for my BA, but I didn’t read cuneiform. So I began to read translations of the laws of Hammurabi and even more important, the debt cancellations or “clean slates” of Hammurabi and all the other members of his Babylonian dynasty, as well as those of neighboring lands, and earlier in Sumer.I found that it didn’t matter that I hadn’t studied Assyriology. Having to read Bronze Age royal proclamations in translation actually turned out to be an advantage, because the translation of the royal inscriptions and proclamations was quite different in German, French, English and American. It seemed that each translator used their own preconceptions of what exactly rulers were doing when they “proclaimed order.”The American popularizer of Sumer, Samuel Kramer, said that its royal amargi acts were simply a tax reduction. He wrote a New York Times op-ed urging Ronald Reagan to cut taxes just like Urukagina did around 2350 BC. Many Mesopotamian tax debts indeed were canceled, because the major debts in the Bronze Age were to the palace and to the temple officials, these being the period’s two large institutions. But these Clean Slates were much more than merely a tax-debt cancellation (much less a “cut”).The British approach saw these royal proclamations as an expression of free trade. Wilfred Lambert and I had a discussion at one of the Rencontre meetings on that issue. He wanted to see whether I could, as an economist, talk about Assyriology. The one word he chose to discuss was andurarum, which was the Babylonian word that Hammurabi and Assyrian rulers used for a debt cancellation. As part of the Assyrian ruler’s cancellation of debts owed to the palace, royal tariffs on imports also were waived – a particular category of some royal claims, and not limited to the barley debts that were the main aim of royal proclamations. That special case was in a sense free trade, but only one byproduct of proclaiming a Clean Slate.Andurarum meant literally a free-flowing, meaning that bond servants held by their creditors had the liberaty to go back to their original homes. House slaves (often “mountain girls” that debtors had pledged to creditors were returned to their former masters who owned them. And land that had been forfeited to creditors was restored to debtors. (The Babylonian word was cognate to Hebrew deror, the word used in Leviticus 25 for the kindred Jubilee Year.)The Germans had just what I was focusing on: a debt cancellation. F. R. Krauss wrote a detailed study of this. But then the French assyriologist Dominique Charpin had the least anachronistic translation of all. He called it a “restoration of order,” a return to the “mother condition” ending the disorder. The root of the Sumerian term for such proclamations, amargi was ama, “mother.” For instance, when the Iraqi President Hussein said that his war against the American invasion by George W. Bush was going to be “the mother of all wars,” he meant the paradigmatic war. Amargi was the paradigmatic social balance that Bronze age society thought should be the norm.
