Nehemiah 5 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.

Now there was a huge outcry from the common people and their wives against their fellow Jews.

Some were saying, "We have large families. We need grain just to eat and stay alive."

Others were saying, "We're mortgaging our fields, our vineyards, and our homes just to get grain during this famine."

Still others were saying, "We've had to borrow money against our fields and vineyards to pay the king's tax.

Our flesh and blood is the same as our countrymen's. Our children are the same as theirs. Yet here we are, forcing our sons and daughters into slavery. Some of our daughters have already been enslaved, and we're powerless to do anything because our fields and vineyards belong to others now."

When I heard their outcry and these complaints, I was furious.

I thought it through carefully, and then I confronted the nobles and the officials. I told them, "You are charging interest to your own people!" And I called a large assembly to deal with them.

I said to them, "We've done everything we could to buy back our Jewish brothers and sisters who were sold to foreign nations. And now you're selling your own people, only for them to be sold back to us?" They were silent. They couldn't find a word to say.

Then I said, "What you're doing is not right. Shouldn't you live in reverence for our God to avoid the mockery of our enemies, the non-Jewish nations around us?

I and my brothers and my men have also been lending the people money and grain. But let's stop charging interest!

Give back to them right now—today—their fields, their vineyards, their olive groves, and their homes, and also the percentage you've been charging them on the money, the grain, the new wine, and the olive oil."

They said, "We'll give it back. We won't demand anything more from them. We'll do exactly what you say." Then I called the priests and made the nobles and officials take a solemn oath to do what they had promised.

I also shook out the fold of my robe and said, "May God shake out every man from his house and his property who doesn't keep this promise — shaken out and emptied just like this!" The whole assembly said, "Yes! Let it be so!" And they praised Yahweh. And the people did as they promised.

Also, from the day King Artaxerxes appointed me as governor in the land of Judah — from the twentieth year to the thirty-second year, twelve years total — neither I nor my brothers ate the food allotted to the governor.

The governors before me had burdened the people heavily — they had taken food and wine from them, plus forty shekels of silver. Even their servants lorded it over the people. But I didn't do that, because I feared God.

I also devoted myself to working on this wall. We didn't buy any land. And all my servants were gathered there for the work.

At my table there were a hundred and fifty Jewish officials, plus those who came to us from the surrounding nations.

What was prepared daily at my expense: one ox, six choice sheep, and poultry, plus every ten days an abundant supply of all kinds of wine. Yet I never demanded the governor's food allowance, because the demands on these people were already heavy enough.

"Remember me favorably, my God, for everything I've done for this people."