Nehemiah 5

₁Some men and women came to the Jewish_leaders and they complained. ₂They said: ‘We have many children and we must have wheat to eat if we want to live.’ ₃Other people said: ‘There is very little food because we had to sell our wheat_fields, our vineyards and houses to get wheat.’ ₄And other people said: ‘We had to sell our wheat_fields and our vineyards to get money to pay taxes to the king. ₅We are people of Judah, but we had to give our sons and daughters to become slaves. Some men have taken away our daughters and we can do nothing about it. And our wheat_fields and vineyards now belong to other people.’

₆I was very angry when I heard what they said. ₇I thought about it and then I accused the important people and the leaders and said to them: ‘You are telling other Jews to pay you more and more money.’ I called all the people from the congregation to come together and at the meeting I accused them. ₈I told the important people and the leaders: ‘The people of Judah were sold to other people who were not Israelites, and we had to buy them back and free them. But now you sell them to be slaves again and we will have to buy them back again.’ The leaders kept quiet. They did not say anything. ₉Then I said: ‘This is not a good thing that you have done. You must live in the right way. You must serve the Lord so that our Gentile enemies can not say anything bad about us. ₁₀My brothers, my men and I have also lent money and wheat to these poor people. We must now forget that we have given them something, and we must tell them that they owe us nothing. ₁₁You must give back their wheat_fields, their vineyards, their olive trees and their houses. Tell them they do not have to give back the money and the wheat and olive oil that they owe you.’

₁₂They said: ‘Yes, we will give it back and we will not ask them to pay anything more. We will do what you say.’ I called the priests and they all had to promise they would do what they said and that God was their Witness. ₁₃I threw out everything that I had in my cloak and I shook out everything that I kept in it and then I said: ‘I pray that God will do the same to every man who does not want to do what he has promised. I pray that God will shake him out of his house and out of everything he has so that he will have nothing.’ The congregation said: ‘Amen.’ And they praised the Lord. Everyone did what he or she had promised.

₁₄Everyone must know that my brothers and I did not ask for the money that a governor should get for food. We could have asked for it, because the king chose me to be the governor of Judah. I was governor from the 20th year after Artaxerxes had become king to the 32nd year, for 12 years. ₁₅The governors who were here before me made the people suffer. They took bread and wine from each person every day and the people had to pay them 40 shekels of silver every day. The men who worked for the governors also made the people suffer. But I did not do the same because I respect the Lord. ₁₆Everyone must also know that I have worked very hard to build this wall and I did not buy any houses or fields, and the men who work for me have done the same. ₁₇I gave food to 150 people of Judah and their leaders every day, and to Gentiles from other lands who had come to us. ₁₈Every day I gave a cow, 6 fat sheep and a lot of chicken to be cooked for them, and every 10th day I also gave wine for everyone. I did not ask for the money that a governor must get to buy food, because these people had to work very hard.

₁₉Then I prayed and said: ‘Lord my God, please bless me for everything that I have done for my people.’