Nehemiah 5:4

NET Bible® (New English Translation)

Then there were those who said,“We have borrowed money to pay our taxes to the king on our fields and our vineyards.

Additional Resources

Referenced Verses

  • Ezra 4:13 : 13 Let the king also be aware that if this city is built and its walls are completed, no more tax, custom, or toll will be paid, and the royal treasury will suffer loss.
  • Ezra 4:20 : 20 Powerful kings have been over Jerusalem who ruled throughout the entire Trans-Euphrates and who were the beneficiaries of tribute, custom, and toll.
  • Ezra 7:24 : 24 Furthermore, be aware of the fact that you have no authority to impose tax, tribute, or toll on any of the priests, the Levites, the musicians, the doorkeepers, the temple servants, or the attendants at the temple of this God.
  • Neh 9:37 : 37 Its abundant produce goes to the kings you have placed over us due to our sins. They rule over our bodies and our livestock as they see fit, and we are in great distress!
  • Deut 28:47-48 : 47 The Curse of Military Siege“Because you have not served the LORD your God joyfully and wholeheartedly with the abundance of everything you have, 48 instead in hunger, thirst, nakedness, and poverty you will serve your enemies whom the LORD will send against you. They will place an iron yoke on your neck until they have destroyed you.
  • Josh 16:10 : 10 The Ephraimites did not conquer the Canaanites living in Gezer. The Canaanites live among the Ephraimites to this very day and do hard labor as their servants.
  • 1 Kgs 9:21 : 21 Their descendants remained in the land(the Israelites were unable to wipe them out completely). Solomon conscripted them for his work crews, and they continue in that role to this very day.

Similar Verses (AI)

These verses are found using AI-powered semantic similarity based on meaning and context. Results may occasionally include unexpected connections.

  • Neh 5:1-3
    3 verses
    90%

    1 Nehemiah Intervenes on behalf of the Oppressed Then there was a great outcry from the people and their wives against their fellow Jews.

    2 There were those who said,“With our sons and daughters, we are many. We must obtain grain in order to eat and stay alive.”

    3 There were others who said,“We are putting up our fields, our vineyards, and our houses as collateral in order to obtain grain during the famine.”

  • Neh 5:5-12
    8 verses
    86%

    5 And now, though we share the same flesh and blood as our fellow countrymen, and our children are just like their children, still we have found it necessary to subject our sons and daughters to slavery. Some of our daughters have been subjected to slavery, while we are powerless to help, since our fields and vineyards now belong to other people.”

    6 I was very angry when I heard their outcry and these complaints.

    7 I considered these things carefully and then registered a complaint with the wealthy and the officials. I said to them,“Each one of you is seizing the collateral from your own countrymen!” Because of them I called for a great public assembly.

    8 I said to them,“To the extent possible we have bought back our fellow Jews who had been sold to the Gentiles. But now you yourselves want to sell your own countrymen, so that we can then buy them back!” They were utterly silent, and could find nothing to say.

    9 Then I said,“The thing that you are doing is wrong! Should you not conduct yourselves in the fear of our God in order to avoid the reproach of the Gentiles who are our enemies?

    10 Even I and my relatives and my associates are lending them money and grain. But let us abandon this practice of seizing collateral!

    11 This very day return to them their fields, their vineyards, their olive trees, and their houses, along with the interest that you are exacting from them on the money, the grain, the new wine, and the olive oil.”

    12 They replied,“We will return these things, and we will no longer demand anything from them. We will do just as you say.” Then I called the priests and made the wealthy and the officials swear to do what had been promised.

  • Lam 5:1-6
    6 verses
    76%

    1 The People of Jerusalem Pray: O LORD, reflect on what has happened to us; consider and look at our disgrace.

    2 Our inheritance is turned over to strangers; foreigners now occupy our homes.

    3 We have become fatherless orphans; our mothers have become widows.

    4 We must pay money for our own water; we must buy our own wood at a steep price.

    5 We are pursued– they are breathing down our necks; we are weary and have no rest.

    6 We have submitted to Egypt and Assyria in order to buy food to eat.

  • Neh 9:36-38
    3 verses
    76%

    36 “So today we are slaves! In the very land you gave to our ancestors to eat its fruit and to enjoy its good things– we are slaves!

    37 Its abundant produce goes to the kings you have placed over us due to our sins. They rule over our bodies and our livestock as they see fit, and we are in great distress!

    38 The People Pledge to be Faithful(10:1)“Because of all of this we are entering into a binding covenant in written form; our leaders, our Levites, and our priests have affixed their names on the sealed document.”

  • Neh 10:31-32
    2 verses
    73%

    31 We will not buy on the Sabbath or on a holy day from the neighboring peoples who bring their wares and all kinds of grain to sell on the Sabbath day. We will let the fields lie fallow every seventh year, and we will cancel every loan.

    32 We accept responsibility for fulfilling the commands to give one third of a shekel each year for the work of the temple of our God,

  • 16 I gave myself to the work on this wall, without even purchasing a field. All my associates were gathered there for the work.

  • 37 We will also bring the first of our coarse meal, of our contributions, of the fruit of every tree, of new wine, and of olive oil to the priests at the storerooms of the temple of our God, along with a tenth of the produce of our land to the Levites, for the Levites are the ones who collect the tithes in all the cities where we work.

  • Lam 5:8-9
    2 verses
    72%

    8 Slaves rule over us; there is no one to rescue us from their power.

    9 At the risk of our lives we get our food because robbers lurk in the wilderness.

  • 9 We have not built any houses to live in. We do not own any vineyards, fields, or crops.

  • Ezra 4:13-14
    2 verses
    71%

    13 Let the king also be aware that if this city is built and its walls are completed, no more tax, custom, or toll will be paid, and the royal treasury will suffer loss.

    14 In light of the fact that we are loyal to the king, and since it does not seem appropriate to us that the king should sustain damage, we are sending the king this information

  • Gen 47:18-19
    2 verses
    70%

    18 When that year was over, they came to him the next year and said to him,“We cannot hide from our lord that the money is used up and the livestock and the animals belong to our lord. Nothing remains before our lord except our bodies and our land.

    19 Why should we die before your very eyes, both we and our land? Buy us and our land in exchange for food, and we, with our land, will become Pharaoh’s slaves. Give us seed that we may live and not die. Then the land will not become desolate.”

  • 4 For we have been sold– both I and my people– to destruction and to slaughter and to annihilation! If we had simply been sold as male and female slaves, I would have remained silent, for such distress would not have been sufficient for troubling the king.”

  • 4 Then the local people began to discourage the people of Judah and to dishearten them from building.

  • 4 Hear, O our God, for we are despised! Return their reproach on their own head! Reduce them to plunder in a land of exile!

  • 4 In that day people will sing this taunt song to you– they will mock you with this lament:‘We are completely destroyed; they sell off the property of my people. How they remove it from me! They assign our fields to the conqueror.’

  • 11 Therefore, because you make the poor pay taxes on their crops and exact a grain tax from them, you will not live in the houses you built with chiseled stone, nor will you drink the wine from the fine vineyards you planted.

  • 15 Hasn’t he treated us like foreigners? He not only sold us, but completely wasted the money paid for us!

  • 10 And now you are planning to enslave the people of Judah and Jerusalem. Yet are you not also guilty before the LORD your God?

  • 20 Powerful kings have been over Jerusalem who ruled throughout the entire Trans-Euphrates and who were the beneficiaries of tribute, custom, and toll.

  • 7 From the days of our fathers until this very day our guilt has been great. Because of our iniquities we, along with our kings and priests, have been delivered over by the local kings to sword, captivity, plunder, and embarrassment– right up to the present time.

  • 25 “If you lend money to any of my people who are needy among you, do not be like a moneylender to him; do not charge him interest.

  • 22 At that time I instructed the people,“Let every man and his coworker spend the night in Jerusalem and let them be guards for us by night and workers by day.”

  • 9 We inquired of those elders, asking them,‘Who gave you the authority to rebuild this temple and to complete this structure?’

  • 2 Everyone will suffer– the priest as well as the people, the master as well as the servant, the elegant lady as well as the female attendant, the seller as well as the buyer, the borrower as well as the lender, the creditor as well as the debtor.

  • 15 He will demand a tenth of your seed and of the produce of your vineyards and give it to his administrators and his servants.

  • 4 They replied,“You have not wronged us or oppressed us. You have not taken anything from the hand of anyone.”

  • 4 They also asked them,“What are the names of the men who are building this edifice?”

  • 9 Although we are slaves, our God has not abandoned us in our servitude. He has extended kindness to us in the sight of the kings of Persia, in that he has revived us to restore the temple of our God and to raise up its ruins and to give us a protective wall in Judah and Jerusalem.

  • 35 We also accept responsibility for bringing the first fruits of our land and the first fruits of every fruit tree year by year to the temple of the LORD.

  • 11 Look how they are repaying us! They come to drive us out of our allotted land which you assigned to us!