Nehemiah 5:11

Restore. Having denounced oppression and stated the principle involved, Nehemiah made a strong appeal for action. He called upon those holding the lands of their poorer brethren as security to restore these to their owners without delay (see PK 650).

The hundredth. The hundredth taken as interest is probably, like the centesima of the Romans in the time of Cicero, to be understood as a monthly payment. One per cent per month was not a high rate of interest, compared with that usually paid in the ancient Orient. In Babylonia and Assyria the usual rate was 20-25 per cent for silver and 33 1/3 per cent for grain. Texts of the 7th century B.C. from Gozan (Tell Halaf), in Mesopotamia, reveal an annual rate of interest of 50 per cent for silver and 100 per cent for grain in that locality. In Egypt, it was 12-24 per cent during the Ptolemaic period (last three centuries B.C.), from which alone we have records of this kind. Nevertheless, the poor of Judea must have groaned under the load of interest, even if a 12 per cent annual interest in Judea cannot be called exorbitant when compared with the rates in other countries.