The Problems Facing The Poorer People (Nehemiah 5:1-5).
The three examples that follow are representative of a whole range of problems rather than being specific, but underlying them are the problems that the poor faced, especially when there was drought or famine. Compare the situation in the time of Haggai over seventy years previously (Haggai 1:6; Haggai 1:10-11). These poor consisted of day-labourers who had no land (see Matthew 20:1-15), and subsistence farmers with meagre strips of land.
‘Then there arose a great cry of the people and of their wives against their brother Jews.'
The taking of the adult males to work on the walls left many families, which were already struggling to survive, in a parlous situation. (A similar situation would arise during warfare). They would have to depend on the labours of their wives and children. This would explain why the wives are particularly mentioned as being vociferous. They were bearing the brunt of the situation. Thus the families were complaining about the harshness of their fellow-Jews who were taking advantage of the situation to increase their own wealth, rather than obeying the Law which said, ‘you shall surely open your hand to your brother, to your needy, and to your poor in your land' (Deuteronomy 15:11).
‘For there were those who said, “We, our sons and our daughters, are many. Let us get grain, that we may eat and live.”
The first complaint is on behalf of those who were starving because they could not afford to buy food. Their breadwinners, who would normally be acting as day-labourers for wages, were not available, and yet they still had to support large families. Losing them for even a period of less than two months was disastrous. They needed grain simply so that they could eat it and survive. There is no mention of them possessing land. We must therefore assume that they were landless.
‘Some also there were who said, “We are mortgaging our fields, and our vineyards, and our houses. Let us get grain, because of the drought.”
The second group did own a small amount of land. But they were subsistence farmers, struggling to produce enough to eat. However, the harvest had been poor, and their adult males had neither been present to help with the meagre harvest, nor to act as part-time labourers, earning wages so as to supplement the little that they produced. Thus in order that they might obtain food to eat, and grain which would have to be sown to produce the following year's harvest, they had mortgaged their tiny fields and vineyards. Repayments were becoming due and in order to pay them they would have to sell some of their children into debt-slavery (Nehemiah 5:5), or lose their land, which would then put them in the position of the first people.
‘There were also those who said, “We have borrowed money for the king's tribute on our fields and our vineyards.'
The slightly larger fields and vineyards of the third group had also not been productive because of the drought, and the position had been made worse because their adult males were not there to help but were taken up with building the walls. Thus they had had to borrow money to pay the king's tribute, based on land ownership, thereby mortgaging their future. These loans would have to be paid back, seemingly with interest (which was actually forbidden - Exodus 22:25; Leviticus 25:36-37; Deuteronomy 23:19-20), and this would have to be paid out of future produce. Financially things were difficult.
‘Yet now our flesh is as the flesh of our brothers, our children as their children: and, lo, we bring into bondage our sons and our daughters to be servants, and some of our daughters are brought into bondage (already), nor is it in our power to help it, for other men have our fields and our vineyards.”
All three groups were concerned about the possibility of eventually having to sell their children into debt slavery, whereby their children would become unpaid servants, with payment for their services being given up front as the ‘purchase price' of the young virtual slave. This slavery would last for seven years (Exodus 21:2-11; Deuteronomy 15:12-18). And this was being done to them, not by foreigners, but by their fellow-Jews who were of the same stock as they were. Indeed some of their daughters had already been brought into such bondage (girls would be sold first as they were not so useful in the fields). Nor could their parents do anything about it as their fields and vineyards were under the control of others, either through sale or mortgage, with the result that there was no other way of obtaining money.