Leviticus 25:37

Summary

The verse prohibits two related economic practices toward a fellow member of the community: giving silver with neshekh ("interest", H5392) and giving food for marbit ("profit/increase", H4768). The two clauses form a parallel structure, repeating the same prohibition with different objects (money and food).

Key words

• kaspekha ("your silver", H3701G) — masculine singular construct with 2ms suffix; the object of the first prohibition.
• titten ("you will give", H5414G) — qal imperfect, repeated identically in both clauses, marking ongoing/future prohibited action.
• neshekh ("interest", H5392) — masculine singular noun, related to the root for "bite," used here as the instrument-marker "with interest" (be-neshekh).
• marbit ("profit", H4768) — feminine singular noun, from a root meaning "to increase," parallel to neshekh but applied to the second clause.
• okhlekha ("your food", H0400) — masculine singular construct with 2ms suffix, the object of the second prohibition, paralleling kaspekha.

What the text says

The Hebrew presents two structurally mirrored prohibitions built on the same verb, titten ("you will give", H5414G), each negated by lo' ("not", H3808). In the first clause, the object kaspekha ("your silver", H3701G) precedes the verb, and the manner is expressed afterward with the preposition-noun phrase be-neshekh ("with interest", H5392). In the second clause, the order shifts: the manner phrase u-ve-marbit ("and for profit", H4768) comes first, before the verb, and the object okhlekha ("your food", H0400) comes last. This inversion creates a chiastic arrangement (object–verb–manner // manner–verb–object), a common feature of Hebrew legal parallelism that reinforces the equivalence of the two prohibited transactions — lending money and lending food — without needing to repeat every element identically.

The term neshekh (H5392) is etymologically tied to "biting," giving the Hebrew term a concrete image of what interest does to the borrower, while marbit (H4768) derives from a root meaning "increase," describing the lender's excess gain. Both nouns describe surplus taken from the transaction, but from different semantic angles — one emphasizing harm to the debtor, the other gain to the creditor.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate diverges structurally in the second clause: instead of a verb meaning "give" (paralleling dabis... ad usuram), it uses non exiges ("you shall not exact/demand"), applied to frugum superabundantiam ("surplus of produce"). This shifts the second prohibition from "you will not give food for profit" (as in the Hebrew lo-titten... marbit and the LXX's οὐ δώσεις... τὰ βρώματα) to "you will not demand a surplus of crops," changing the implied agent of the transaction from lender-giving to lender-demanding. The LXX preserves the "give" verb in both clauses (δώσεις) and adds αὐτῷ ("to him") in the second clause, an explicit indirect object not present in the Hebrew's second clause, which relies on the antecedent from the first clause.