Debt: The First 5,000 Years

by David Graeber

Probably the most famous ancient homily on usury, though, was Saint Ambrose’s De Tobia, pronounced over several days in Milan in 380 BC. He reproduces the same vivid details as Basil: fathers forced to sell their children, debtors who hanged themselves out of shame. Usury, he observes, must be considered a form of violent robbery, even murder.102 Ambrose, though, added one small proviso that was later to have enormous influence. His sermon was the first to carefully examine every Biblical reference to moneylending, which meant that he had to address the one problem later authors always had to struggle with—the fact that, in the Old Testament, usury is not quite forbidden to everyone. The key sticking point is always Deuteronomy 23:19–20: Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother; usury of money, usury of victuals, usury of any thing that is lent upon usury. Unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury. So who then is this “stranger” or, a better translation of the Hebrew nokri, “foreigner”? Presumably, Ambrose concluded, one against whom robbery and murder would have been justified as well. After all, the ancient Jews lived amidst tribes like the Amalekites, on whom God had specifically instructed them to make war. If by extracting interest one is, as he puts it, fighting without a sword, then it is only legitimate to do so from those “whom it would not be a crime to kill.”103 For Ambrose, living in Milan, all this wa...