Nehemiah 5:1-8

1Some men and their wives were upset, because of the things that some other Jews were doing.

2Many of them said, ‘We are big families, with many sons and daughters. We need to have food to eat so that we can stay alive.’

3Other people said, ‘People have to lend us money to buy food. We have to give them our fields, our vineyards and our homes until we can pay them back.’

4Other people said, ‘We have to pay taxes to the king for our fields and our vineyards. People had to lend us money to pay the taxes.

5Now we have to sell our sons and daughters as slaves so that we can pay back the money. But we are from the same human family as those other Jews. Our children are not different from their children. Already some of our daughters have become slaves. Our fields and vineyards now belong to other people, so we are helpless to do anything.’

6When I heard what they were complaining about, I was very angry.

7I thought carefully about what they had said. Then I said to the Jewish leaders and officers, ‘You are cheating your own people! You are taking back more money than you have lent to them.’ I told the Jews to come together for a big meeting.

8I said to them all, ‘When our own Jewish people have become slaves of foreign people, we have tried hard to buy them back. But now you are making your own people sell their children to you. And you want us to pay you to buy them back again!’ The Jewish leaders kept quiet. They had nothing to say.