Nehemiah 5

And there was a great outcry of the people and of their wives against their brothers the Jews.

And there were some saying: With our sons and with our daughters we are many; let us get grain and eat and live.

And there are some saying: Our fields and our vineyards and our houses — we are pledging them, and we will get grain and eat.

And there are some saying: We have borrowed silver for the king's tributes — our fields and our vineyards and our houses.

And now, as the flesh of our brothers is our flesh, as their sons are our sons — and behold, we are forcing our sons and our daughters into slavery, and some of our daughters are already being oppressed, and there is no power in our hands; and our fields and our vineyards belong to the honored ones.

And I was exceedingly grieved when I heard their outcry and these words.

And my heart took counsel within me, and I contended with the honored ones and the rulers and said to them: Shall a man exact from his own brother? Yet you are exacting! And I set a great assembly against them.

And I said to them: We have acquired back our brothers the Jews who were being sold to the nations, of our own free will; and are you selling your own brothers? And they kept silent and found no word.

And I said: The thing that you are doing is not good. Not so! In the fear of our God you shall depart from the reproach of the nations, our enemies.

And my brothers and my acquaintances and I have also placed silver and grain among them. Let us now abandon this exaction.

Return to them, I pray, this very day their fields, their vineyards, their olive trees and their houses; and out of the silver, bring out to them the grain and the wine and the oil.

And they said: We will give it back, and we will seek nothing from them; we will do just as you say. And I called the priests and put them under oath to act according to this word.

And I shook out my cloak and said: So may God shake out every man who will not establish this word, out of his house and out of his labor; and may he be thus shaken out and empty. And the whole assembly said, Amen, and they praised the Lord; and the people did according to this word.

From the day when he commanded me to be their ruler in the land of Iouda, from the twentieth year and until the thirty-second year of Arthasastha — twelve years — I and my brothers did not eat their forced exaction.

And the former forced exactions, which before me they laid heavily upon them — and they took from them in bread and in wine, and last of all silver, forty didrachmas; and those of them who had been shaken out exercised authority over the people. But I did not act so, because of the fear of God.

And in the work of the wall of these men I took no hold; I acquired no field; and all who were gathered there were at the work.

And the Jews, a hundred and fifty men, and those who came to us from the nations round about us, were at my table.

And what was prepared for one day was one calf and six choice sheep, and a he-goat was prepared for me; and every ten days wine in abundance for all. And with all this I did not demand the bread of the forced exaction, because the servitude was heavy upon this people.

Remember me, O God, for good, in all that I have done for this people.