Discovery BoxExodus 22:24-26 
Context22:24 and my anger will burn and I will kill you with the sword, and your wives will be widows and your children will be fatherless. 1
22:25 “If you lend money to any of 2 my people who are needy among you, do not be like a moneylender 3 to him; do not charge 4 him interest. 5 22:26 If you do take 6 the garment of your neighbor in pledge, you must return it to him by the time the sun goes down, 7
1 sn The punishment will follow the form of talionic justice, an eye for an eye, in which the punishment matches the crime. God will use invading armies (“sword” is a metonymy of adjunct here) to destroy them, making their wives widows and their children orphans.
2 tn “any of” has been supplied.
3 sn The moneylender will be demanding and exacting. In Ps 109:11 and 2 Kgs 4:1 the word is rendered as “extortioner.”
4 tn Heb “set.”
5 sn In ancient times money was lent primarily for poverty and not for commercial ventures (H. Gamoran, “The Biblical Law against Loans on Interest,” JNES 30 [1971]: 127-34). The lending to the poor was essentially a charity, and so not to be an opportunity to make money from another person’s misfortune. The word נֶשֶׁךְ (neshekh) may be derived from a verb that means “to bite,” and so the idea of usury or interest was that of putting out one’s money with a bite in it (See S. Stein, “The Laws on Interest in the Old Testament,” JTS 4 [1953]: 161-70; and E. Neufeld, “The Prohibition against Loans at Interest in the Old Testament,” HUCA 26 [1955]: 355-412).
6 tn The construction again uses the infinitive absolute with the verb in the conditional clause to stress the condition.
7 tn The clause uses the preposition, the infinitive construct, and the noun that is the subjective genitive – “at the going in of the sun.”
