Leviticus 25:37

Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex)

English Translation

You shall not lend him your money at interest, nor give him your food for profit.

World English Bible · Public Domain

Highlights

1 first appearance in the Hebrew Bible
Septuagint runs longer here — compare

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Word by word

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וּבְמַרְבִּ֖ית

marbîyth

H4768

“and · in/at · multitude”

Conjunction + Preposition + Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute

Appears 5× in the Hebrew Bible
First appears here

Full BDB Definition

Origin: from H7235

TWOT: 2103d

increase, great number, multitude, greatness - increase - of family - increment, interest, usury - great number (of people) - greatness (of wisdom)

About this verse

These counts appear in no published source. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged text and Lemma’s own curated glosses. What Lemma adds →

10: words
7: distinct lemmas
Pentateuch: section

Notable vocabulary

The rarest word here is וּבְמַרְבִּ֖ית multitude H4768 — appearing just 5 times in the whole Hebrew Bible.

First appearance in Scripture

This word makes its first canonical appearance in the Hebrew Bible here:

וּבְמַרְבִּ֖ית multitude H4768

Shared distinctive vocabulary

וּבְמַרְבִּ֖ית multitude H4768 occurs in 5 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:

Grammatical profile

2 verbs
4 nouns
1 preposition
3 particles

Verb forms

תִתֵּ֥ן Qal · Imperfect
תִתֵּ֥ן Qal · Imperfect

Repetition

Words recur within this verse — often emphatic in Hebrew:

תִתֵּ֥ן to give H5414 ×2
לֹֽא not H3808 ×2

Hebrew & Septuagint length

In English translation the verse runs 16 words from the Hebrew and 24 from the Septuagint (LXX English) — the Septuagint runs noticeably longer here. See the side-by-side →

A rough comparison of the two English renderings, which tokenize alike — not a word-level alignment.

Word counts can differ between the Hebrew and the Greek without any difference in meaning — e.g. the Hebrew direct-object marker אֵת has no separate Greek word, and Greek often adds the article ὁ.

In the original languages it is 10 Hebrew tokens and 17 Greek tokens — but the two are counted differently (Hebrew bundles its prefixes and suffixes into one token; the Greek is in lemma form), so that isn’t a like-for-like length.

Hebrew and Greek witnesses Masoretic Hebrew ↔ Greek Septuagint

The same verse in the two great witnesses to the Old Testament, shown verse-for-verse.

Here the Septuagint runs noticeably longer than the Hebrew — LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) 24 words vs World English Bible 16. A rough length comparison of the two English translations, not a word-level alignment — read both below.

These are two independent witnesses, not word-aligned to each other, and the Septuagint is shown in lemma (dictionary) form.

Hebrew Leviticus 25:37 Masoretic · Westminster Leningrad Codex

אֶ֨ת כַּסְפְּךָ֔ לֹֽא תִתֵּ֥ן ל֖וֹ בְּנֶ֑שֶׁךְ וּבְמַרְבִּ֖ית לֹא תִתֵּ֥ן אָכְלֶֽךָ

You shall not lend him your money at interest, nor give him your food for profit.

World English Bible · Public Domain

Greek LXX Leviticus 25:37 Septuagint · lemma form

ὁ ἀργύριον σύ οὐ δίδωμι αὐτός ἐπί τόκος καί ἐπί πλεονασμός οὐ δίδωμι αὐτός ὁ βρῶμα σύ

You shall not lend your money to him at interest, and you shall not lend your meat to him to be returned with increase.

LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) · Public Domain

Hebrew: Westminster Leningrad Codex (CC BY 4.0). Greek: Septuagint (public domain); English from LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) (Public Domain). How the Septuagint differs from the Hebrew →

Targum (Aramaic paraphrase)

The Targum is the ancient Jewish Aramaic paraphrase of the Hebrew Scriptures — an interpretive translation, not the Hebrew text itself. Onkelos (literal) and Pseudo-Jonathan (expansive) render the Torah, and Jonathan the Prophets. Coverage is partial: where no permissively-licensed English translation exists for a verse, only the Aramaic is shown. This is verse-level text, not a word-by-word alignment to the Hebrew.

Targum Onkelos Torah (Genesis–Deuteronomy)

יָת כַּסְפָּךְ לָא תִתֵּן לֵהּ בְּחִבּוּלְיָא וּבְרִבִּיתָא לָא תִתֵּן מֵיכְלָךְ

(no public-domain English translation for this verse)

Targum Onkelos — Aramaic: “Onkelos Genesis” (public domain); “Onkelos Exodus” (public domain); “Onkelos Leviticus” (public domain); “Onkelos Numbers” (public domain); “Onkelos Deuteronomy” (public domain). English: “Sefaria Community Translation” (CC0 1.0 (public-domain dedication)); “J.W. Etheridge. The Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan Ben Uzziel on the Pentateuch. London: Longmans, Green, 1862” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan Torah (Genesis–Deuteronomy)

עַמִי בְּנֵי יִשְרָאֵל יַת כַּסְפֵּיכוֹן לָא תִתְּנוּן לֵיהּ בְּשַׁעַרְיָין וּבְרִיבְיָין לָא תִתְּנוּן עִבוּרֵיכוֹן

My people of the house of Israel, you shall not lend him for usury, nor give him your provisions for increase.

Targum Pseudo-Jonathan — Aramaic: “Targum Jonathan on Genesis” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Exodus” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Leviticus” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Numbers” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Deuteronomy” (public domain). English: “The Targum of Jonathan ben Uzziel, trans. J. W. Etheridge, London, 1862” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.

Commentary

Notes on Leviticus 25:37 from classic Christian and Jewish commentators (each source and its license shown beneath its notes). The classic Christian expositions comment on the surrounding passage and are grouped to its opening verse, so a note may address several verses; the Jewish commentaries on the Tanakh (Rashi and others) are per-verse, so they appear only where the commentator wrote on this verse.

Lemma curates 59 commentaries, every one of them public domain or Creative Commons licensed, each selected and text-cleaned for this edition rather than reprinted as found. About our sources →

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(37) Thou shalt not give him.—This is simply an emphatic repetition of the declaration in the foregoing verse, and favours the ancient distinction between the two terms.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne

37. No interest was to be permitted in such a case for money lent, nor, if the loan took the form of the necessaries of life, was more than the amount lent to be exacted in return. The same law appears in Exo_22:25 [Heb. 24]; Deu_23:20. In the latter case it is from ‘a stranger’ interest may be demanded.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

John Gill's Exposition

Thou shalt not give him thy money upon usury,.... Lend him money, expecting and insisting upon a large interest for it; this is to be understood of persons in poor and necessitous circumstances, of which the text only speaks; otherwise, if persons borrow money to gain by it, to carry on a greater trade, or to make purchase with it, it is but reasonable that the lender should have a share of profit arising from thence:

nor lend him thy victuals for increase; by which it should seem that those two words, used in Lev 25:36, though in the main they signify the same thing, yet may be distinguished, the one as concerning money, the other food; and which latter is not to be given by way of loan to a person in want of it, but freely; as for instance, if a man gives a poor man a bushel of wheat, on condition he gives him two for it hereafter, this is lending or giving his victuals for increase.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Lend him thy victuals for increase - i. e. supply him with food for thy own profit.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Whedon's Commentary on the Bible

Daniel D. Whedon

37. Victuals — In Deu_23:19, there is added the prohibition of “usury of anything that is lent upon usury.” Thus in all the means of life the poor are mercifully guarded against the oppression of avarice.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Lesson kit

Teaching starters — assembled from the data on this page, not authored interpretation. Every prompt links to the verse data it draws on. Edit before teaching.

Leviticus, in the Pentateuch, opens this verse with 10 words (7 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is marbîyth (“multitude”). The Greek Septuagint runs longer here. A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.

Discussion questions

The word marbîyth carries the sense “multitude.” How does it shape the verse?
This is the first place “multitude” appears in Scripture (first appears here). What does its debut here establish?
How does 1 Samuel 2:33, which shares the word «multitude», read alongside this verse?
What does the repetition of “to give” (2× in this one verse) do in this verse?
The Septuagint runs longer here than the Hebrew. What might account for the difference?
These translations render this verse differently; the difference is in the English rendering, not the original. What questions does that raise?
«תִתֵּ֥ן» is a Qal Imperfect verb. How does that grammatical form shape the action described?
Compare how Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers and The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges read this verse. Where do they agree or differ?

Things to notice

1 word makes its first canonical appearance in Scripture here.
This verse counts 10 Hebrew ↔ 17 Greek words.
These translations choose different wording for 12 words in this verse.
“to give” occurs 2× in this single verse.
7 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 10 words in this verse.