the penalty of the homicide is declared, the monition is added: "Ye shall have one manner of law as well for the stranger as for one of your own country, for I am the Lord your God." It was first commanded by the Hebrew Scriptures, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself: I am the Lord."[1] There is no justification whatever for interpreting this command as applicable solely to 'the Israelite. The veriest tyro in the knowledge of Hebrew could prove satisfactorily by many a quotation that the word reá is also applied to a non-Israelite.[2] Again and again we are told not to vex "the stranger," but "the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself."[3] In his sublime prayer of dedication, Solomon implores the Lord: "Moreover, concerning a stranger that is not of thy people Israel, but cometh from a far-off country—when he shall come and pray toward this house, hear thou in heaven thy dwelling-place, and do according to all that the stranger calleth to thee for."[4] What grand, all-embracing brotherhood do these words breathe!
I am aware that here and there in the Pentateuch some enactments may be found, which, at the first blush, would seem to bear out the professor's assertion, and with these I shall now very briefly deal. The statement has been made that according to the Mosaic law it was only forbidden to lend the Israelite at a usurious rate, but that no prohibition of this nature existed with respect to the non-Israelite. This opinion is sought to be supported by a verse in Deuteronomy[5] which is translated in the authorized version, "Unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury, but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury." The error is, that neshech is supposed to be synonymous with usury in the present for acceptation of the term. The word, like usury in old English, simply means interest—any compensation whatever paid for the use of money. Accordingly the passage should be rendered: "Unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon interest, but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon interest." With respect to the Israelite it was prohibited both to take and to give any interest whatever, for it was clearly the design of the Mosaic legislation to prevent the few growing rich at the expense of the many, and to maintain the simple primitive conditions of self-reliant, self-contained industrial support by agriculture and handicrafts, credit being regarded as an evil and a humiliation to the borrower. "Thou shalt lend to many nations, but shalt not borrow,"[6] is a blessing which sufficiently indicates the advantage of an internal commerce free from internal credit and indebtedness. Had the Israelites been allowed to lend to one another at interest, their lands would have been encumbered, and their energies as agriculturists would have been crippled. This happened in Athens and in Rome, where all the landed property gradually fell into the hands of the rich, and where the poor were so oppressed by the debts they owed the landowners that a social revolution ensued. The like condition of things even now exists in India. But this danger could not arise from lending to the foreigner. It was found necessary since the earliest times of the Hebrew commonwealth to carry on some commerce with neighboring countries, in order to exchange the surplus of their own produce for the commodities of other lands. Solomon sent to Hiram, king of Tyre, to purchase sandalwood and sycamore for the construction of the temple. Thus, also, if an Israelite possessed any capital or produce which he could not utilize in his own country, he had a right to demand from a member of a foreign state some compensation for the use of the money or produce lent to him, and if the foreigner applied that capital to commercial enterprise no Mosaic principle was infringed by charging him interest. This permission, however, only applied to sums borrowed for mercantile purposes. When the Gentile needed the loan of money, not commerce, but for his subsistence, the Mosaic law made no difference between him and the Hebrew. "And if thy brother be waxen poor, and his hand faileth with thee, then thou shalt relieve him; yea, though he be a stranger and sojourner; that he may live with thee. Take thou no usury of him or increase; but fear thy God."[7] Yes, this "tribal" law, which we are told "sanctioned a difference of principle between the rule of dealing with a Hebrew and that of dealing with a stranger," did not allow the Jew to make any distinction between the Israelite and the Gentile in the exercise of philanthropy.
