Exodus 22:24-26

22:24 and my anger will burn and I will kill you with the sword, and your wives will be widows and your children will be fatherless. ¹ 

22:25 “If you lend money to any of ²  my people who are needy among you, do not be like a moneylender ³  to him; do not charge ⁴  him interest. ⁵  22:26 If you do take ⁶  the garment of your neighbor in pledge, you must return it to him by the time the sun goes down, ⁷ 

[22:24]  ¹ sn The punishment will follow the form of talionic justice, an eye for an eye, in which the punishment matches the crime. God will use invading armies (“sword” is a metonymy of adjunct here) to destroy them, making their wives widows and their children orphans.

[22:25]  ² tn “any of” has been supplied.

[22:25]  ³ sn The moneylender will be demanding and exacting. In Ps 109:11 and 2 Kgs 4:1 the word is rendered as “extortioner.”

[22:25]  ⁴ tn Heb “set.”

[22:25]  ⁵ sn In ancient times money was lent primarily for poverty and not for commercial ventures (H. Gamoran, “The Biblical Law against Loans on Interest,” JNES 30 [1971]: 127-34). The lending to the poor was essentially a charity, and so not to be an opportunity to make money from another person’s misfortune. The word נֶשֶׁךְ (neshekh) may be derived from a verb that means “to bite,” and so the idea of usury or interest was that of putting out one’s money with a bite in it (See S. Stein, “The Laws on Interest in the Old Testament,” JTS 4 [1953]: 161-70; and E. Neufeld, “The Prohibition against Loans at Interest in the Old Testament,” HUCA 26 [1955]: 355-412).

[22:26]  ⁶ tn The construction again uses the infinitive absolute with the verb in the conditional clause to stress the condition.

[22:26]  ⁷ tn The clause uses the preposition, the infinitive construct, and the noun that is the subjective genitive – “at the going in of the sun.”