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Nehemiah 5:11

"The hundredth": interest, tax or debt?

Nehemiah tells the creditors to restore lands, vineyards, olive groves and houses "and the hundredth of the money, grain, wine and oil." The Hebrew, Vulgate and KJV have "the hundredth"; the library's Greek (Giguet) does not, reading instead "bring them grain, wine and oil for the price of the silver."

Manuscript variant: witnesses differ in wording

The family tree

Each row is a language or text tradition. Witnesses in the same row may share ancestry, revise one another, or have an uncertain relationship; the line under each box says which. A solid arrow appears only where direct copying or a documented revised edition is established. Order by date never implies copying. Scroll sideways on a phone.

✓ contains it · ✕ does not · ❝ quotes part of it · ⓘ reports on manuscripts · ▢ pages lost · – no copy survives

  • Same line, through lost copies
  • Translation
Hebrew
  1. Original Ezra–NehemiahMemoir c. 430 BC; book compiled c. 400–300 BC (debated)
  2. Masoretic Text (Leningrad Codex)AD 1008Descends, through lost copies, from Original Ezra–Nehemiah
Greek
  1. Greek 2 Esdras 11–23 (library text: Giguet's French)Translated c. 2nd century BC or laterTranslated from a Hebrew text of Ezra–Nehemiah
Latin
  1. Jerome's Vulgate (2 Esdras = Nehemiah)c. AD 400Translated from Hebrew texts of Jerome's day
English
  1. King James Bible1611Translated from printed Masoretic Hebrew

Every witness, in order

  1. Memoir c. 430 BC; book compiled c. 400–300 BC (debated)

    Original Ezra–Nehemiah

    – No copy survives

    No original survives. No Qumran fragment of Nehemiah has been identified.

  2. Translated c. 2nd century BC or later

    Greek 2 Esdras 11–23 (library text: Giguet's French)

    ✓ Contains this passageTranslated from a Hebrew text of Ezra–Nehemiah

    How the site knows this: Known here only through a translation.

    Rendez-leur dès aujourd'hui leurs champs… et apportez-leur du blé, du vin et de l'huile pour prix de l'argent

    and bring them grain, wine and oil for the price of the silver

    No "hundredth." Greek 2 Esdras via Giguet's French; not checked against a critical Greek edition.

  3. c. AD 400

    Jerome's Vulgate (2 Esdras = Nehemiah)

    ✓ Contains this passageTranslated from Hebrew texts of Jerome's day

    How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: Clementine Vulgate (1592 edition).

    quin potius et centesimum pecuniæ, frumenti, vini et olei, quam exigere soletis ab eis, date pro illis

  4. AD 1008

    Masoretic Text (Leningrad Codex)

    ✓ Contains this passageDescends, through lost copies, from Original Ezra–Nehemiah

    How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: Westminster Leningrad Codex, a digital transcription of the Leningrad Codex.

    וּמְאַת הַכֶּסֶף וְהַדָּגָן הַתִּירוֹשׁ וְהַיִּצְהָר אֲשֶׁר אַתֶּם נֹשִׁים בָּהֶם

    and the hundredth of the money and the grain, the new wine and the oil that you are exacting from them

    Some emend me'at ("hundredth") to mashsha't ("loan, debt").

  5. 1611

    King James Bible

    ✓ Contains this passageTranslated from printed Masoretic Hebrew

    How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: King James Version (1769 text).

    also the hundredth part of the money, and of the corn, the wine, and the oil, that ye exact of them

What changed, and why

Readings: one percent per month interest (twelve percent a year, a common ancient rate); a share of produce; or "the debt" by emendation. Nehemiah may be asking creditors to give back what they took or to stop taking it. The difference in the library's Greek may reflect a translator struggling with the same word. No reading is certain.

What the evidence shows

  • Independently documentedThe library's Greek lacks "the hundredth." Via Giguet's French.
  • Disputed"The hundredth" means 1% monthly interest.

Sources

  • H. G. M. Williamson, Ezra, Nehemiah (Word Biblical Commentary 16, 1985)

Related lessons

  • Debt, Land and the Governor's Example →A great cry rises from the people and their wives: they have mortgaged fields, vineyards and houses for grain; they have borrowed to pay the king's tax; their sons and daughters are being taken as debt-slaves. Nehemiah, angry, confronts the nobles and officials, calls an assembly, and makes them swear to restore land and the "hundredth." He refuses the governor's food allowance for twelve years and feeds 150 at his table.