Devotional:
Who lends his money without usury and does not accept a bribe against the innocent. In this verse David enjoins the godly neither to oppress their neighbours by usury, nor to suffer themselves to be corrupted with bribes to favour unrighteous causes. David seems to condemn all kinds of usury in general, so that the very name has been everywhere held in detestation. But crafty men have invented specious names under which to conceal the vice; and thinking by this artifice to escape, they have plundered with greater excess than if they had lent on usury avowedly and openly. God, however, will not be dealt with and imposed upon by sophistry and false pretences. He looks upon the thing as it really is. There is no worse species of usury than an unjust way of making bargains, where equity is disregarded on both sides. Let us then remember that all bargains in which the one party unrighteously strives to make gain by the loss of the other party, whatever name may be given to them, are condemned.
With respect to usury, it is scarcely possible to find in the world a usurer who is not at the same time an extortioner, and addicted to unlawful and dishonourable gain. Accordingly, Cato of old justly placed the practice of usury and the killing of men in the same rank of criminality, for the object of this class of people is to suck the blood of other men. It is also a very strange and shameful thing, that, while all other men obtain the means of their subsistence with much toil, while husbandmen fatigue themselves by their daily occupations, and artisans serve the community by the sweat of their brow, and merchants not only employ themselves in labours, but also depose themselves to many inconveniences and dangers, - moneymongers should sit at their ease without doing any thing, and receive tribute from the labour of all other people.
We should keep ourselves from plundering and devouring the poor who are in distress and want.
The gain which he who lends his money upon interest acquires, without doing injury to any one, is not to be included under the head of unlawful usury.
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