On Tobit 39–69

They say that the peoples of the Huns make war on all nations, yet are subject to moneylenders; and though they live without laws, they obey the laws of gambling alone. They play dice under arms, carry dice together with weapons, and more of them perish by their own throws than by the enemy’s. In their own victory they become captives and suffer the plundering of their own people, which they do not know how to suffer from an enemy. For this reason they never lay aside the pursuit of war: when the loser at dice has lost the whole gift of his plunder, he seeks the means to play by the peril of fighting. Often they are carried away with such passion that, when the loser has handed over his weapons, the only things they value highly, he stakes his life on one throw of the dice and makes himself over to the power of the winner or the moneylender. Indeed it is established that one of them, known even to the Roman emperor for his loyalty, paid with the punishment of a death he was ordered to suffer the price of the slavery he had brought on himself, beaten by such a lot. So the moneylender presses even the necks of the Huns and drives them onto the sword; he presses the barbarians by the terror of his cruelty.

What is fouler than one who lends today and demands it back tomorrow? “And such a man,” it says, “is hateful.” The offer is indeed alluring, but the exaction is monstrous. Indeed the very kindness of the offer makes the cruelty of the exaction. He brings out money; he demands hypothecs and stores them in his storehouses. One sum of money is given by moneylenders, and how many are exacted from debtors! What names they have made for themselves! A coin is given: it is called interest; it is called the lot, it is called the head; it is written as debt. This monstrous prodigy of many heads makes a manifold exaction: he calls it a contract, he names it a bond, hypothecs.

he demands; he seizes a pledge, calls it a trust; he asserts an obligation, proclaims interest, praises the hundredths. The moneylender’s money is a kind of viper, which brings forth such great evils. Yet the viper, fruitful for punishment, its womb dragged out, is burst by its own offspring and by its mother’s death teaches that the brood does not fall short of the mother. For as soon as they begin to be serpents they tear her apart with their bites. There, where the poison is born, it is first proved. But the moneylender’s money conceives all its evils: it gives birth, it nourishes, and it grows the more in its own brood, more numerous by its grim offspring, no less winding than a serpent; gathering itself wholly into a coil so as to protect its head, it lashes with the rest of its body and thrusts out the head alone to wound. With huge coils it binds those it has seized; with the head alone it kills. If the head is safe, even if the rest of it has been wasted away, it revives.

Serpents also have different seasons for mating and giving birth; but usurious money creeps on from the day the agreement is made with growing interest. It does not know how to suffer labor, because it pours the pains rather onto others. There, pains as of a woman in labor. Hence the Greeks called interest tokos (“childbirth”), because it seems to stir up the pains of labor in the debtor’s soul. The Kalends come: the principal gives birth to the hundredth. Each month comes, interest is begotten, the evil offspring of evil parents. This is the brood of vipers. The hundredth has grown: it is demanded, not paid; it is added to the principal. The prophetic curse comes true, “deceit upon deceit,” interest the worse offspring of a wicked seed. And so it no longer begins to be a hundredth but the whole sum; that is, not the hundredth of the interest, but interest on the hundredth.

I think that usura (“interest”) too is named from usus (“use”), because as clothes are worn through by use, so patrimonies are worn through by interest. … It is a word of pain. What good can there be in a thing that begins with pain and with obligation? They say that hares bear young, rear them, and at once conceive again: so too with these engravers of interest, interest is begotten and begotten again. It is nourished and born, and once born it already conceives. The roots of trees too are first planted so that they may take hold; when they have taken hold, then they begin to grow green, later to sprout. But usurious money, scarcely planted, already sprouts. Seeds break out in due time, animals give birth in due time; for there is “a time to give birth and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted, a time to kill and a time to heal,” and further on: “a time to acquire and a time to give back, a time to keep and a time to cast away,” as Ecclesiastes says. Usurious money is sown today and bears fruit tomorrow; it always gives birth and never dies; it is always planted and hardly ever uprooted. The moneylender wants always to acquire, never to lose; never to keep his money, always to cast it out; never to heal, always to kill.

And since the book of Ecclesiastes by Solomon is a good teacher in all things, let us stay with it a little. “The eye,” it says, “will not be satisfied with seeing, and the ear will not be satisfied with hearing.” Nor is the moneylender filled by receiving, nor is his desire satisfied by hearing the daily counting of bronze. And again: “Everything that has been is the very thing that will be.” Money always grows; avarice knows no leisure, interest no holidays. “All the torrents,” it says, “run into the sea, and the sea is not filled.” This sea is the moneylender: he swallows the patrimonies of all like waves, and himself does not know how to be filled. Yet many use the sea for gain; no one uses the moneylender except for loss. There it is the profit of many, here the shipwreck of all.

There are many animals that begin to breed quickly but also quickly cease to breed; the principal breeds quickly and never stops; indeed, once it has received the beginning of growth, it extends its increase without limit. Moreover, everything that grows, when it has reached the form, measure, and size of its nature, ceases to increase; but the moneylenders’ money always increases with time, and going beyond the form of the mother principal it keeps no measure. Many animals too, when the young born of them begin to breed, lose the use of generation as if their strength were spent; but the principal of a loan, when it has been equalled by the growing hundredths, both renews its old age and multiplies its usual offspring by addition.

This evil is neither new nor trivial, since it is forbidden by the command of the ancient and divine law. The people that had despoiled Egypt and crossed the sea on foot is warned to beware of shipwreck by money lent at interest. And whereas on other sins it gave directions with a warning once or repeated a few times, about lending at interest it gave notice more often. You have in Exodus: “If you lend money to the ward, the orphan, the poor man, you shall not choke him in your house; you shall not lay interest on him.” It shows what it is to choke, namely to lay interest on someone; for the creditor’s noose strangles, and what is worse, strangles the soul. By this word it expressed both the violence of a robber and the knot of a hideous death. “If you take your neighbor’s garment as a pledge, you shall return it before sunset; for this is his only covering, this the garment for his shame. In what shall he sleep? So if he cries out to me, I will hear him.” Have you heard, moneylenders, what the law says, of which the Lord said: “I have not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it”? Do you abolish what the Lord did not abolish? To demand interest, it says, is to choke. This too was said late, outside, by some of their wise men: “What is lending at interest?” “To kill a man,” he said. But certainly Cato did not come before Moses, who received the law; he was much later.

“If you take your neighbor’s garment as a pledge, you shall return it before sunset,” lest the shame of the stripped man appear. But you strip and lay bare, and do not give back. See that the sun does not go down on your avarice, lest the sun of righteousness set for you because you do not hold to righteousness, or the sun of iniquity go down upon your crimes. The day perishes for the unwilling man too, and the night rushes in, as for Judas, who, when the devil had put it into his heart, rose to betray, and it was night; for the sun of righteousness had set for him and the one who entered his heart had lain down upon him. He made darkness for him, so that he should not see the author of light. There the wretch perished at that supper at which others are saved. So give back the garment to the debtor, in which he may sleep and be at rest. If you will not give it back, “I will hear him,” he says, “because I am merciful.” If you do not hear, I will hear; I will have mercy; I will not despise the prayer of the needy.

In Deuteronomy too it is written: “You shall not exact from your brother interest on money, interest on food, and interest on anything you lend to your brother. If you lend to a foreigner, you shall exact interest from him, but from your brother you shall not exact it.” You see how much weight there is in the words. “Do not exact,” it says, “interest from your brother”; that is, from one with whom you ought to have all things in common. Do you exact interest from him? Your brother is a sharer of your nature and a co-heir of grace. Do not exact more from one from whom it is hard to ask back even what you gave, unless he has the means to pay.

And because many, evading the precepts of the law, when they have given money to merchants, do not exact interest in money but take from their goods what amounts to the profits of interest, let them hear what the law says: “You shall not take interest on food nor on anything you lend to your brother.” For that is fraud and evasion of the law, not keeping it. And do you think you act piously because you receive from the merchant something like a loan? From that source he commits fraud in the price of his goods, from which he pays you interest. You are the author of that fraud, you are its partner; whatever he has cheated goes to your profit. Food is interest, clothing is interest, and whatever is added to the principal is interest. Whatever name you give it, it is interest. If it is lawful, why do you shun the word, why do you draw a veil over it? If it is unlawful, why do you seek the increase?

What is worse, this is the vice of very many, and above all of the rich, whose cellars are stocked under this heading. If someone thinks he should give a banquet, he sends to a merchant to bring him a cask of wormwood wine free; he directs an innkeeper to find him Picene or Tyrian wine; a butcher to procure him a sow’s womb; another to supply fruit. So they call humanity what stands at another’s peril. You drink, and another melts in tears; you feast, and choke others with your food; you delight in music, and another laments with pitiable wailing; you taste fruit, and another swallows a thorn. “Do they gather grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles?” Interest is a thorn, the hundredth is a thorn, moneylending is a thistle; it burns cruelly. How then can you have fruit from thorns? If this fruit does not grow from thorns, will that eternal fruit grow? You grow rich from hardships, you seek gain from tears, you feed on another’s hunger, you strike silver from the spoils of stripped men, and you think yourself rich, you who beg a coin from a poor man? But hear what the Savior says: “Woe to you rich, who have your consolation!”

But perhaps you say that it is written: “To the foreigner you shall lend at interest,” and you do not consider what the Gospel says, which is fuller. But let us set that aside for the moment; consider the words of the law itself. “To your brother,” it says, “you shall not lend at interest; from the foreigner you shall exact it.” Who was then the foreigner but Amalek, but the Amorite, but the enemy? There, it says, exact interest. From him whom you rightly wish to harm, against whom arms are lawfully borne, interest is lawfully demanded. Him whom you cannot easily conquer in war, you can quickly avenge yourself on by the hundredth. Exact interest from him whom it is no crime to kill. One who demands interest fights without iron; one who has been a usurious exactor of his enemy avenges himself on the foe without a sword. So where there is the right of war, there is also the right of interest. But your brother is every one who belongs first to the faith, then to the people of Roman law: “I will tell your name to my brothers; in the midst of the church I will praise you.”

Indeed in Leviticus too the law prescribes that interest is not to be asked of a brother. For you have it thus: “And your brother shall live with you. You shall not give him your money at interest, and you shall not give him your food to receive back more.” In general this sentence of God has excluded every increase of the principal. Hence David too judged blessed and worthy of a heavenly dwelling the one who did not give his money at interest. If then one who did not give is blessed, without doubt one who gave at interest is cursed. Why then do you choose the curse rather than the blessing? You can be blessed if you will, you can be just. For the just man, according to Ezekiel, is one who will return the pledge to the debtor, will not give his money at interest, will not take a surplus, and will turn his hand from injustice. “This man is just; he shall surely live,” says the Lord. “But one who has not returned a pledge and has set his eyes on idols has done iniquity. He has given at interest and taken a surplus; this man shall not live. He has done all these iniquities; he shall surely die; his blood shall be upon him.” See how he has joined the moneylender with the idolater, as though making the crime equal. Choose then what is sweet.

Why are you always gloomy, always most bitter, always anxious? Let mercy come forth from you at last, let truth come forth; let lying be sent away, let fraud be hated. You have taught perjury. It is called the moneylender’s oath when perjury is being prepared. You often swear falsely, when the money has been repaid, that the bond is missing; afterwards you swear falsely that you have not received the money. So do not be always wretched, always greedy, always sad. Lions change their ferocity. “Out of the eater,” it says, “came forth food, and out of the strong and the gloomy came forth sweetness.” The Greek has “and the gloomy”; so we find it. Yet this is understood of the strong one, because the lion is strong in ferocity, and the fierce one is gloomy. So from you also, who devour money and avarice, let mercy come forth (for this is the food of the needy), and from the gloomy let sweetness come forth, so that you forgive one who has nothing to pay with. Why do you draw sins along as with a long rope and like the yoke-strap of a heifer? This indeed happens when you prolong the interest. You hold a poor debtor: let there be some grace at least where there is no hope of profit. And I say this in accordance with your own avarice.

Moreover, the Lord in the Gospel judges that we should rather lend to those from whom no repayment is hoped for. For he says: “If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what thanks have you? For sinners lend to sinners in order to receive. But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing, and your reward will be great in heaven, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, as your Father also is merciful.” Notice what name the moneylender has received from the Lord, the same name that belongs also to one bound to your interest: “Sinners,” he says, “lend to sinners in order to receive.” Both are sinners, the moneylender and the debtor. “But you,” he says, “love your enemies.” Do not examine what your enemies deserve, but what you ought to do. Lend to those from whom you do not hope to receive back what was given. Here there is no loss but gain. You give very little, you will receive much. You give on earth, and it will be paid to you in heaven; you lose the interest, you will have a great reward; you cease to be moneylenders, you will be sons of the Most High; you will be merciful, proving yourselves heirs of the eternal Father.

But you delight in the names of moneylenders and interest. I do not begrudge you that either. I will teach you how you can be good moneylenders, how you may seek good interest. Solomon says: “He lends to the Lord who has mercy on the poor, and he will repay him according to his gift.” See, good lending has been made out of evil; see, a blameless moneylender; see, praiseworthy interest. So do not think me grudging toward your profits. Do you think I am taking a human debtor away from you? I provide God, I substitute Christ, I point out him who cannot cheat you. Lend your money, then, to the Lord in the hand of the poor. He is bound and held; he writes down whatever the needy man has received (his Gospel is the bond); he stands surety for all the needy; he pledges his good faith. Why do you hesitate to give? If some rich man of this world is offered you who promises on his own credit for some debtor, you count out the money at once. For us the Lord of heaven and founder of this world is the poor man, and still you deliberate; what richer guarantor are you looking for?

But you allege that he became poor, though he was rich. You have seen, then, that his credit is rich, his credit is sufficient. He became poor when he paid for us, and still his very poverty does not deceive; for he made us rich, whom you thought poor. For the apostle says: “He became poor, though he was rich, so that by his poverty you might become rich.” Good is the poverty that bestows riches. So do not fear poverty, that you may be rich. Give idle money, and you will receive fruitful grace; you will relieve the needs of the poor, and your anxiety about guarding it will be lessened. What the poor man receives will not perish, and what you give to the needy will be kept for you without a guard. If you seek the increase of interest: in the law there is a blessing, in the Gospel a heavenly reward. What is sweeter than a blessing, what is greater than heaven? If interest in food is desired, that too is at hand, as we read; for he who has mercy on the poor is himself fed.

Return the pledges you hold, then, since you have found a sufficient guarantor. But they still grumble, saying that it is permitted to hold pledges, and they defend themselves by the law. For they say: It is written in Deuteronomy: “If your neighbor owes you anything, you shall not enter his house to take a pledge, but you shall stand outside, and the man who owes you will bring the pledge out to you. But if that man is poor, you shall not sleep with his pledge, but you shall surely return his pledge to him at sunset, and he will sleep in his garment and bless you, and it will be mercy to you before the Lord your God.” And elsewhere, they say, it is written: “You shall not take a mill or the upper millstone as a pledge, for this man is pledging a life.” And elsewhere: “You shall not take a widow’s garment as a pledge.” From this they argue that particular pledges are forbidden, not all: those of the poor man and the widow, and that a mill and an upper millstone are forbidden to be taken in pledge.

But since the Lord himself says through the prophet Ezekiel that one who returned a pledge is just and one who kept it unjust, he surely urges that not some particular pledge but every pledge in general be returned. Job says: “The written bond that I had against someone, drawn up under oath, I read, putting it on as a crown, and did I not tear it up and give it back, receiving nothing from the debtor?” Since the Lord commands that we should hope for nothing from those to whom we have lent that we ought to receive back, how do they think a pledge is to be retained according to the law?

And lest they break out again in the same way and say that they are even urged to lend at interest by the oracle of the law, since it is written: “You shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow,” it is time to discuss more fully and expressly, and to teach, what is to be lent and to whom the statutes of the law prescribe it; for the question of lending comes before the question of the pledge. “The sinner,” it says, “will borrow and not repay, but the just man has mercy and gives.” You hear, debtor, what you ought to avoid; you hear, creditor, what you ought to imitate. And further on: “I was young and have grown old, and I have not seen the just man forsaken, nor his seed seeking bread. All day long he has mercy and lends.” Where does this just man get what to lend all day long? Is the rich man then just, and the richer each is, the more just? Will one who has more to lend be more just? But it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.

Tell me then, holy David, what does he lend? I have brought a testimony against myself, unless you help me. Peter used to say: “Silver and gold I have not.” Was he not just? Explain to me, then, what he lends. For you said: “Blessed is the man who has mercy and lends; he will order his words in judgment.” I have found what the just man lends. Let Peter too teach me what he himself lends, he who said to the needy man looking at him and at John: “Silver and gold I have not.” Will you give nothing then to the poor man, apostle? Yet you give, and give more than others; you give the needy what others cannot bestow; you give the needy something after which he cannot be in want; you give the needy what even the rich long to receive; you give the needy what those who have this silver and gold do not know how to confer, because avarice hinders them; you give the needy so as to make him richer than the rich. You have stirred my mind; I long for this gift of yours. Tell me, I beg, what you give. Do not keep me long in suspense; I want to ask, if you will pay quickly. But you have paid quickly: you did not put off the needy man, you did not despise the prayer of the poor, you did not make him despair longer, you did not go up to the temple empty, though you said: “Silver and gold I have not.” Not only those go up with full hands who have gold and silver; the poor man too goes up not empty; he too went up not empty, because he had no gold and silver. Let us hear what this poor man gives. “But what I have,” he says, “I give you. In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, rise and walk.” O poverty to be desired, O neediness richer! The man to whom the rich used to give was lame; one poor man gave, and at once he who was lame was made whole.

So the just man has something to lend; he has silver too to lend: he lends his words. This is the just man’s silver; for “the words of the Lord are pure words, silver tried by fire, proved in the earth, purified seven times.” This is what one lends who receives the law, who meditates on the law, who practices the law. This Peter lent, this Paul lent. To them it was said that they should go to the men of the nations: to Peter, to the centurion Cornelius, when it was said to him: “Rise and go, doubting nothing, for I have sent them.” And he rose and went. And further on he said: “Can we forbid water, so that these should not be baptized who have received the Holy Spirit?” And he ordered them to be baptized; that is: “You shall lend to the nations,” so that you forgive sins and take away debts, “but you shall not borrow”; for the sinner borrows and will not repay his sins, because he is a sinner. To Paul it is said: “You shall lend to the nations,” for he was sent to the nations; to John it is said: “You shall lend to the nations”; to James it is said … to whom it was said: “Go, baptize the nations.”

It is said to the people of the fathers: “If you keep the commandments, you will be blessed and will lend the word to the nations.” Indeed, what follows shows that it is not said of money: “You will be ruler over many nations, but no one will rule over you. May the Lord your God make you the head and not the tail, and you will then be above and not beneath, if you hear the voice of the Lord your God.” And it follows: “But if you do not hear, cursed are you in the city and cursed are you in the field.” And further on: “Cursed is the offspring of your womb.” It is surely not money that makes one blessed, but the knowledge of God, the preaching of the word: if we lend the grace of the Lord, if we bestow the words of the Lord on the needy, if we keep the heavenly commandments. And on the other hand, it is not the lack of money to lend that makes one cursed; but if zeal is lacking, if the keeping of the heavenly statutes is lacking, you will be cursed.

Indeed, the mystery of the church is clearly expressed. For first he said to the disciple of the law: “If you hear the law and keep it, you will lend to the nations.” This was done by our fathers. Moses lent to the nations, who gained proselytes; Joshua son of Nun lent, Gideon lent, Samuel, David, Solomon, Elijah, Elisha lent; and if anyone wished to know the word, he went to them: the queen of the south came to hear the wisdom of Solomon.

When the Jewish people began not to keep the law, newcomers, that is those born of the people of the nations who believed in the Lord Jesus, began to lend that ancient people the interpretation of the Scriptures. Timothy, born of a Greek father, lent the word to the Jews when he had received the priesthood; and today we priests in the church lend the word to the Jews who have passed from the synagogue to the church; we lend both new and old money. For what they had they no longer have: “they have eyes and do not see, they have ears and do not hear.” They have the money and do not have it, because they do not know its use, they do not know its value, they have not recognized its figure and form. For if they had recognized it, they would never have denied the author of that money, saying: “We do not want this man to reign over us.” He, having received the kingdom and returning, ordered his servants to be called to whom he had given money, and he praised those who had lent out the money; but to the one who kept his master’s money idle he answered: “You knew that I am a severe man; I take up what I did not lay down and reap what I did not sow. Why then did you not put my money on the table? And when I came I would have demanded it with interest.”

You have heard what the money of the good moneylender is: what money gains good interest; what money does not disgrace the lender nor oppress the debtor; what money rust cannot cover nor moth penetrate; what money is not from an earthly treasure but an eternal one; what money makes the receiver rich and takes nothing from the lender. This money has interest, so that it bears not a hundredth part of what you gave but a hundredfold fruit. Open wide, then, the lap of your mind to receive the counted sum of this money; fix the gaze of your heart to recognize the image and inscription of this money. Indeed, examine this money; set up on the table of your soul a counting board, firm in virtues and squared; store it in the treasury of your breast, from which the learned scribe brings out things new and old. You see what this money is like, how it joins in itself the hated names of creditor and debtor. I who was inveighing against moneylenders now call forth the debtor. I want you to be lenders of this money, so that those who would borrow may hasten to you of their own accord; through it you can acquire not a coin but a kingdom, through it you may seek not curses but the grace of blessing.

This money is lent by the people of the nations, who knew how to receive what was lent, how to discern it, how to examine it. You refused, being in need of spiritual lending; you began to be in want. Of you, then, it was said by the Son of God: “The sinner will borrow and will not repay.” To you it is said: “The stranger who is among you will rise above you, but you will go down to the lowest.” For one who does not know Christ does not know the highest; one who does not ascend to Christ is always in the depths; but the people that receives the word is at the summit. This people holds the whole patrimony of faith; of it the law says: “He will lend to you, but you will not lend to him; he will be the head for you, but you will be the tail”; that is, he will be first, you last and cast off. “I will take away from Judea head and tail,” beginning and end: the beginning is Christ, who, when asked who he was, answered: “The beginning, who also speak to you.” The end too he calls Christ; for he is “the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.” So one who does not believe unto righteousness has neither beginning nor end, but is himself his own end.

We have learned what lawful lending is; let us learn also what the pledge is that the law orders to be returned before sunset. Hear what it is from the apostle, who says: “God has given the pledge of the Spirit in our hearts.” Now three things are spoken of: a pledge, a thing entrusted, and a deposit. A pledge they call what is received for money lent; a thing entrusted and a deposit, what we have committed to someone for safekeeping. Hence the apostle says: “I know whom I have believed, and I am sure that he is able to guard what I have entrusted until that day.” The same apostle taught what a deposit is, saying: “Guard the good deposit through the Holy Spirit, who dwells in us.” Is the Spirit the guardian of entrusted silver and gold, or is money guarded by the Holy Spirit? A spiritual pledge, then, is guarded by the Spirit, lest the birds of the sky come and take it from our hearts.

Let us ask, then, that Christ may guard in us this pledge which he himself gave, and preserve his deposit and what he entrusted; for he received nothing from us, but himself entrusted to us what was not ours. And so one who violates another’s deposit suffers the loss of his honor. If we ought not to violate by any fraud what a man has entrusted to us, how much more is it fitting that we keep in good faith a divine and spiritual deposit, lest we suffer grave losses both of reputation and of advantage!

This then is the pledge which the law forbids to be taken as a pledge and carried off by force. For Scripture has it thus: “If your neighbor owes you anything, you shall not enter his house to take a pledge, and the man who owes you will bring the pledge out to you. But if that man is poor, you shall not sleep with his pledge, but you shall surely return his pledge to him at sunset, and he will sleep in his garment and bless you, and it will be mercy to you.”