Covenant Economics: Brothers, Foreigners, and Real Money Text: Deuteronomy 23:19-20
Introduction: The World as a Giant, Impersonal ATM
We live in an age that has thoroughly secularized every square inch of existence, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the realm of economics. To the modern mind, money is a neutral tool, finance is a dispassionate science, and debt is a mathematical reality, stripped of all moral and relational content. We talk about markets, interest rates, and credit scores as though they were forces of nature, like gravity or the weather. The result is a cold, impersonal system where a man in one country can be ruined by a computer algorithm in another, and no one is to blame. The entire global financial structure is a massive, complicated machine for extracting wealth, and it cares nothing for persons, families, or communities. It is a god, and it is a jealous god, but it is a god without a face.
Into this sterile and often brutal landscape, the Word of God speaks with a shocking particularity. God cares immensely about how we handle our money, because He knows that how we handle our money reveals what we truly worship. Our financial dealings are never neutral; they are always relational. They are either building up covenant community or they are tearing it down. They are either honoring our brother or they are exploiting him. The laws God gave to Israel were not primitive suggestions for an agrarian society that we have since outgrown with our sophisticated financial instruments. They are the foundational principles of a just and humane economy, because they are rooted in the character of a just and merciful God.
The world wants a universal, one-size-fits-all economic system. It wants globalism. It wants every person to be an interchangeable unit, a mere consumer or debtor, defined not by his family or his faith, but by his bank account. The Bible, in stark contrast, teaches an economy of distinctions. There is a fundamental difference between how you treat your brother in the faith and how you engage in commerce with someone outside that covenant bond. This is not hypocrisy; it is covenantal realism. It is the recognition that we have special obligations to the household of faith. To erase this distinction is to erase the very meaning of brotherhood. Today's passage is a direct assault on the cold universalism of secular finance, and a call to rebuild an economy where people matter more than profit.
The Text
"You shall not charge interest to your brother: interest on money, food, or anything that may be loaned at interest. You may charge interest to a foreigner, but to your brother you shall not charge interest, so that Yahweh your God may bless you in all that you send forth your hand to do in the land which you are about to enter to possess."
(Deuteronomy 23:19-20 LSB)
The Law of Brotherhood (v. 19)
We begin with the prohibition in verse 19:
"You shall not charge interest to your brother: interest on money, food, or anything that may be loaned at interest." (Deuteronomy 23:19)
The key to this entire passage is the word "brother." This is not primarily about genetics, but about covenant. A brother is a fellow member of the covenant community of Israel. This law is grounded in the reality that Israel was to be a family of families, a holy nation set apart. Within this family, the driving principle was not profit, but mutual care and preservation. Their economic life was to be an expression of their love for one another.
The word for interest here is neshek, which comes from a root word meaning "to bite." This is wonderfully descriptive. The kind of interest being forbidden here is a predatory interest. It is a bite taken out of a man who is already down. We see this clarified in other passages. In Exodus 22:25, the law says, "If you lend money to any of My people who are poor among you, you shall not be like a moneylender to him; you shall not charge him interest." Leviticus 25:35-36 says something similar: "If one of your brethren becomes poor, and falls into poverty among you, then you shall help him... Do not take usury or interest from him."
So, the context is crucial. This is not talking about a commercial loan for a business venture. This is a charitable loan. This is your brother whose ox has died, whose crop has failed, who needs to buy food to feed his children until the next harvest. He is not borrowing to get rich; he is borrowing to survive. To charge him interest in that situation, to take a "bite" out of his need, is to exploit his vulnerability. It is to treat your brother's crisis as your business opportunity. God says you shall not do this. Within the covenant family, you help a brother in need out of love, not for gain. This is the practical outworking of the second great commandment: you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Notice the scope: "interest on money, food, or anything that may be loaned." This is comprehensive. You can't get around the spirit of the law by playing games with the letter. You can't say, "I won't charge you interest on the silver, I'll just have you pay me back with six bushels of wheat when you only borrowed five." Any kind of arrangement that profits from your brother's distress is forbidden. This is about the heart. Are you looking at your brother with compassion or with calculation?
The Law of Commerce (v. 20a)
The passage then makes a crucial distinction in the first part of verse 20.
"You may charge interest to a foreigner..." (Deuteronomy 23:20a)
Now, our modern, egalitarian sensibilities immediately recoil at this. This sounds like a two-tiered ethic, a license for xenophobia. But that is because we are reading our own flattened-out, globalist worldview back into the text. God is not commanding predatory behavior toward foreigners. He repeatedly commands Israel to treat the sojourner and alien with justice and kindness (Exodus 22:21; Leviticus 19:34). So what is the difference?
The difference is the nature of the transaction. The "foreigner" here is not the poor immigrant struggling to get by. He is a traveling merchant, a businessman. He is not part of the covenant family of Israel, and the loan is not a matter of charity but of commerce. He is borrowing money to finance a caravan, to buy goods for trade, to invest in a commercial enterprise where he fully expects to make a profit. In this kind of transaction, it is entirely just for the lender, who is risking his capital, to share in the potential gain. This is not taking a "bite" out of a poor man; this is a business partnership. This is what we would today call an investment or a commercial loan.
The Bible is not anti-business. It is not socialist. The parable of the talents in Matthew 25 explicitly commends the servants who put their master's money to work and generated a return. The wicked servant is condemned precisely because he did nothing with the capital, not even putting it "with the bankers" to receive it back "with interest" (Matthew 25:27). What God forbids is oppressing the poor. What He permits is engaging in productive and profitable commerce.
This distinction is the bedrock of a sane economy. We must distinguish between charity loans and commercial loans. A payday lender who charges a desperate man 400% interest to fix his car so he doesn't lose his job is a wicked man engaged in neshek. He is biting his neighbor. A bank that lends money to a Christian contractor to buy a new piece of equipment so he can expand his business is engaged in a perfectly legitimate commercial transaction. To confuse these two is to fall into error on one side or the other, either by forbidding legitimate business or by sanctioning oppression.
The Law of Blessing (v. 20b)
Finally, God attaches a promise to this command, explaining the purpose behind it.
"...but to your brother you shall not charge interest, so that Yahweh your God may bless you in all that you send forth your hand to do in the land which you are about to enter to possess." (Deuteronomy 23:20b)
Here is the central point. God's economic laws are not arbitrary hoops to jump through. They are the pathway to blessing. God ties their national prosperity directly to their covenant faithfulness in these small, everyday matters. When they deal with one another in love and mercy, when they refuse to profit from a brother's hardship, God promises to bless "all that you send forth your hand to do."
This is the opposite of the Darwinian, dog-eat-dog capitalism that our world assumes is the only way to get ahead. The world says you prosper by taking every advantage, by squeezing every last drop of profit from every transaction. God says you prosper when you are generous. You prosper when your primary concern is the health of the covenant community, not the health of your personal portfolio. When the community is strong, when brothers are cared for and not driven into destitution, the entire nation flourishes under God's hand.
This principle is restated in the New Testament. "Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ" (Galatians 6:2). Our financial lives are one of the primary ways we do this. When a family in the church is in crisis, the rest of the church is to come alongside them, not as investors looking for a return, but as brothers and sisters bearing a burden. This is how the world knows we are Christians, by our love for one another. And that love must be tangible. It must have calloused hands and an open wallet.
Conclusion: Rebuilding a Christian Economy
So what does this mean for us? It means we must reject the world's impersonal view of money and recover a thoroughly covenantal understanding of our economic lives. Our first economic duty is to the household of faith.
First, this means we must learn to distinguish between charity and commerce in our own dealings. Within the church, when a brother or sister is in genuine need, our first impulse must be generosity and mercy, not calculation. This might take the form of an outright gift, or it might be a no-interest loan to help them get back on their feet. The goal is restoration, not profit.
Second, this means we must be ruthless in identifying and condemning modern forms of usury. The payday loan industry, rent-to-own schemes, and other forms of predatory lending that target the poor and desperate are a stench in God's nostrils. They are the modern equivalent of taking a "bite" out of the poor, and Christians should have nothing to do with them except to preach against them and to build charitable alternatives.
Third, this passage reminds us that there is a right and proper sphere for business, for investment, and for profit. The Bible is not against wealth; it is against wealth gotten through injustice. Christians should be the most creative entrepreneurs, the most reliable bankers, the most honest businessmen, because we understand that all our work is done before the face of God, and that He blesses righteous dealings.
Ultimately, this law points us to Christ. He is our true brother who, when we were utterly bankrupt and destitute in our sin, did not charge us interest. He did not offer us a loan. He paid our debt in full. He gave us His infinite righteousness as a free gift. Having received such mercy, how can we turn around and take our brother by the throat for a few paltry dollars? Our economic lives must be a reflection of the gospel we have received. We are to be a people marked by outrageous generosity toward one another, so that a watching world might see our good works, and glorify our Father who is in heaven. That is how a nation is built. That is how a Christian economy is established. It is built one merciful, brotherly transaction at a time, all for the glory of God.