Borrowing
Borrowing in scripture is rarely a neutral commercial act. It is a posture — a hand held out, a brother's resource taken into one's own house, a future obligation set against a present need. The Mosaic legislation governs the borrower's care of what he holds, the prophets and wisdom writers track him into bondage when he cannot repay, the historical narratives stage the crisis at its sharpest points, and Ben Sira sketches the borrower's character from inside. Companion topics treat this material from the lender's side (Lending), the loan-instrument's side (Debt, Usury), and the obligated party's side (Debtor); this page follows the borrower himself.
The Borrower's Care
The earliest statute about borrowing is not about the loan but about the borrowed thing. Yahweh sets a single sentence over the whole practice: "And if a man borrows anything of his fellow man, and it is hurt, or dies, its owner not being with it, he will surely make restitution. If its owner is with it, he will not make it good: if it is rented, it is included in its rental payment" (Ex 22:14-15). The borrower handles what is not his and bears the loss if it is damaged in his hand; the owner's presence shifts the liability back. The case is small and concrete — a borrowed beast of burden — but the principle reaches further: what is borrowed must be returned, and if it is broken it must be replaced.
The narrative picks up the same care from the borrower's side in the floating axe-head. A son of the prophets felling a beam at the Jordan loses his iron in the water "and he cried, and said, Alas, my master! For it was borrowed" (2Ki 6:5). The grief is not for a tool but for a tool not his own; the implication of Ex 22:14 is that he cannot simply walk away. Elisha makes the iron swim, and what was borrowed can be returned: "Take it up to you. So he put out his hand, and took it" (2Ki 6:7).
The Borrower's Bondage
The wisdom literature treats borrowing as a mechanism by which one man passes under the rule of another. The proverb names it without softening: "The rich rules over the poor; And the borrower is slave to the lender" (Pr 22:7). The transaction is a transfer not only of silver but of standing. The psalmist sets the same observation against a moral grid: "The wicked borrows, and does not pay again; But the righteous deals graciously, and gives" (Ps 37:21). The wicked man is identified by the unpaid loan; the righteous man is identified by the loan he forgives or the gift he makes in its place.
The picture turns historical in the widow at Elisha's door. "Your slave my husband is dead; and you know that your slave did fear Yahweh: and the creditor has come to take to him my two children to be slaves" (2Ki 4:1). The borrower is dead, but the loan survives him and now reaches for his children. Elisha's instruction recognizes the framework even as it bypasses it: he tells her to borrow more — but on a different terms entirely, "Go, borrow for yourself vessels abroad of all your neighbors, even empty vessels; don't borrow a few" (2Ki 4:3). What the neighbors lend her costs them nothing because the vessels are returned full of oil; the loan becomes the channel by which the prior debt is paid: "Go, sell the oil, and pay your debt, and you and your sons live from the rest" (2Ki 4:7).
A National Borrowing Crisis
Nehemiah's fifth chapter compresses a whole community into the position of borrower. Three voices rise in turn. The first is hunger: "We, our sons and our daughters, are many: let us get grain, that we may eat and live" (Ne 5:2). The second is mortgage: "We are mortgaging our fields, and our vineyards, and our houses: let us get grain, because of the famine" (Ne 5:3). The third is borrowed silver against tribute: "We have borrowed silver for the king's tribute [on] our fields and our vineyards" (Ne 5:4). The progression — food, land, silver — drives the borrower to the same end Pr 22:7 names: "we bring into slavery our sons and our daughters to be slaves, and some of our daughters are brought into slavery [already]" (Ne 5:5).
Nehemiah's response works against the lender, not the borrower. He confronts the nobles — "You⁺ exact usury, every one of his brother" (Ne 5:7) — and he forces restitution: "Restore, I pray you⁺, to them, even this day, their fields, their vineyards, their oliveyards, and their houses, also the hundredth part of the silver, and of the grain, the new wine, and the oil, that you⁺ exact of them" (Ne 5:11). The reform is not new lending but the unwinding of loans already made. The assembly answers: "We will restore them, and will require nothing of them; so we will do, even as you say" (Ne 5:12). The borrower is freed not by repaying but by having his debt cancelled and his collateral returned.
The Covenant Inversion
Deuteronomy treats borrowing and lending as covenant-state markers. To stand in covenant blessing is to be the lender; to stand under covenant curse is to be the borrower. "For Yahweh your God will bless you, as he promised you: and you will lend to many nations, but you will not borrow; and you will rule over many nations, but they will not rule over you" (De 15:6). The blessing is restated in the great Sinai catalogue: "Yahweh will open to you his good treasure the heavens, to give the rain of your land in its season, and to bless all the work of your hand: and you will lend to many nations, and you will not borrow" (De 28:12). The corresponding curse is the inversion: "The sojourner who is in the midst of you will mount up above you higher and higher; and you will come down lower and lower. He will lend to you, and you will not lend to him: he will be the head, and you will be the tail" (De 28:43-44). The pair makes the borrower's position theologically legible: a nation that needs to borrow has fallen out of the place Yahweh promised it would stand.
The Asked Jewels of Egypt
A peculiar instance of "borrowing" in older translations is Israel's request for jewels at the Exodus, which is listed under BORROWING. The UPDV uses "ask" rather than "borrow," following the Hebrew verb. Yahweh tells Moses ahead of time, "I will give this people favor in the sight of the Egyptians: and it will come to pass, that, when you⁺ go, you⁺ will not go empty. But every woman will ask of her neighbor, and of her who sojourns in her house, jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment: and you⁺ will put them on your⁺ sons, and on your⁺ daughters; and you⁺ will despoil the Egyptians" (Ex 3:21-22). The instruction is repeated on the eve of the final plague: "Speak now in the ears of the people, and let them ask every man of his fellow man, and every woman of her fellow woman, jewels of silver, and jewels of gold. And Yahweh gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians" (Ex 11:2-3). And the asking is fulfilled: "the sons of Israel did according to the word of Moses; and they asked of the Egyptians jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment. And Yahweh gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they let them have what they asked. And they despoiled the Egyptians" (Ex 12:35-36). What the older entry called "borrowing" the UPDV reads as asking and receiving — the close of a long unpaid debt for slave labor, settled by gift under divinely given favor.
The Borrower in Sirach
Ben Sira gives the longest internal portrait of the borrower in the canon. Sirach 29 begins with the lender's command, then turns immediately to the borrower's reciprocal duty: "Lend to your neighbor in time of his need, And repay your neighbor at the appointed time. Confirm your word, and keep faith with him; And [so] will you always have what you need" (Sir 29:2-3). The borrower's good faith is not optional politeness but the condition of his own future ability to receive.
The chapter then catalogs the failure modes. Borrowers reckon a loan as a windfall and so bring trouble on the helper: "Many have reckoned a loan as a windfall, And have brought trouble on those who helped them" (Sir 29:4). The mood shifts from gratitude to evasion: "Until he receives it he kisses your hand, And speaks humbly about his neighbor's money; But when payment is due he prolongs the time, And returns heavy words, and complains of [the shortness of] the time" (Sir 29:5). And the bad borrower repays insult for kindness: "And if he is able [to repay], with difficulty he will receive half, And counts it as a windfall; And if not [able to repay], he has deprived him of his money, And has made him an enemy without cause. With cursings and railings he repays him, And instead of honor he repays him with insult" (Sir 29:6).
The wisdom-warning to the borrower extends to the man who would stand surety. "Do not lend to a man stronger than you; And if you lend, [you are] as one who wastes. Do not become surety for more than you have left; And if you become surety, [you are] as one who repays" (Sir 8:12-13). The proverbial tradition has said the same thing more sharply: "Don't be one of those who strikes hands, [Or] of those who are sureties for debts" (Pr 22:26). The borrower who dragged a friend into guarantee has, in Sirach's reckoning, set him in the place of one who must pay.
The Defaulting Borrower
When the borrower defaults outright, Sirach traces what becomes of him. He loses his own home and becomes a sojourner at another man's table. The chapter's closing pictures are vivid: "It is an evil life going from house to house, For where one is a sojourner, One does not open the mouth; You are a stranger and drink contempt; Besides this you will bear bitter things" (Sir 29:24-25). The host's voice carries the contempt: "'Come here, sojourner, furnish the table, And if there is anything in your hand, feed me'; [Or]: 'Get out, sojourner, from the presence of honor, My brother has come as my guest, I need my house!'" (Sir 29:26-27). And Ben Sira sums it up: "These things are grievous to a man who has understanding: Upbraiding [concerning] sojourning, and the reproach of a money lender" (Sir 29:28).
The defaulting borrower has been driven from his own dwelling by the loan he could not repay; the loss of his roof is the social form of Pr 22:7's slavery. The same picture stands behind Habakkuk's woe on the man who lives by other men's pledges: "Woe to him who increases that which is not his! How long? And that loads himself with pledges! Will they not rise up suddenly that will bite you, and awake that will vex you, and you will be for booty to them?" (Hab 2:6-7). The man who has piled up pledges against borrowed wealth becomes himself the booty when the borrowers wake.
Restitution
The borrower who has handled what is not his is held under the law of restitution. The general principle is given in the theft statutes: "If the sun is risen on him, there will be bloodguiltiness for him; he will make restitution: if he has nothing, then he will be sold for his theft" (Ex 22:3). The same demand presses through the prophets and the gospel. Ezekiel sets the restored pledge as a defining mark of the wicked man's repentance: "if the wicked restores the pledge, gives again that which he had taken by robbery, walks in the statutes of life, committing no iniquity; he will surely live, he will not die" (Eze 33:15). And Zacchaeus, who has not borrowed but exacted, makes the same gesture in fourfold measure: "if I have wrongfully exacted anything of any man, I restore fourfold" (Lu 19:8). The borrower who repays, the creditor who returns the pledge, and the publican who refunds his exactions stand under the same logic — what was taken from another's hand is to be put back into it.
The Borrower Who Pays as a Righteous Man
The closing word in scripture for the borrower returns to the psalm. The wicked borrower is the one who "does not pay again"; the righteous, in counterpoint, "deals graciously, and gives" (Ps 37:21). The borrower's righteousness is measured not by avoiding the loan but by repaying it — and, where possible, by passing on to another what he himself received. Sirach pushes the bar to the same height from inside the practice: "Confirm your word, and keep faith with him; And [so] will you always have what you need" (Sir 29:3). Faithfulness in repayment is itself the condition of the borrower's continued ability to receive. The covenant blessing of De 15:6 imagines a community in which the borrower has finally given way to the lender — not by escaping the loan, but by being delivered out from under it.