10. I, my brethren, and my servants are lending them money and grain. Let us stop this forbidden interest! [Exod. 22:25.]
11. Return this very day to them their fields, vineyards, olive groves, and houses, and also a hundredth of all the money, grain, new wine, and oil that you have exacted from them.
12. Then they said, We will restore these and require nothing from them. We will do as you say. Then I called the priests and took an oath of the lenders that they would do according to this promise.
13. I shook out my lap and said, So may God shake out every man from his house and from [the exercise and fruits of] his labor who does not keep this promise! So may he be shaken out and emptied. And all the assembly said, Amen, and praised the Lord. And the people did according to this promise.
14. Also, in the twelve years after I was appointed to be their governor in Judah, from the twentieth to the thirty-second year of King Artaxerxes, neither I nor my kin ate the food allowed to [me] the governor.
15. But the former governors lived at the expense of the people and took from them food and wine, besides forty shekels of silver [a large monthly official salary]; yes, even their servants assumed authority over the people. But I did not so because of my [reverent] fear of God.
16. I also held fast to the work on this wall; and we bought no land. And all my servants were gathered there for the work.
17. And there were at my table 150 Jews and officials, besides those who came to us from the nations about us.