Mortgage

The single mortgage notice in scripture comes from Nehemiah's wall-rebuilding chapter, when famine pressure forces a section of the Jewish populace to pledge field, vineyard, and house in order to get grain.

Mortgaging Field, Vineyard, and House

The chapter opens with a great cry rising against the wealthier brothers, voiced in three overlapping complaints. The first complaint names the basic need:

"For there were some who said, We, our sons and our daughters, are many: let us get grain, that we may eat and live" (Neh 5:2).

The second complaint is the mortgage clause itself — a three-asset pledge of fields, vineyards, and houses, driven by famine:

"There were also some who said, We are mortgaging our fields, and our vineyards, and our houses: let us get grain, because of the famine" (Neh 5:3).

The third complaint adds a second pressure on the same fields and vineyards — the king's tribute, paid for by borrowed silver:

"There were also some who said, We have borrowed silver for the king's tribute [on] our fields and our vineyards" (Neh 5:4).

The cumulative result is laid out in the next verse: kin treated as kin no longer, sons and daughters drifting into slavery, fields and vineyards already in other men's hands:

"Yet now our flesh is as the flesh of our brothers, our sons as their sons: and, look, we bring into slavery our sons and our daughters to be slaves, and some of our daughters are brought into slavery [already]: neither is it in our power to help it; for other men have our fields and our vineyards" (Neh 5:5).

The mortgage in Nehemiah 5 is therefore a famine-and-tribute pledge of land and house, naming the three categories of property that pass under the lender's claim and pointing forward to the slavery of children that follows when grain has to be bought and tribute has to be paid on the same fields.