Judgment on Israel

⁶ Thus says the Lord:

⁶ You have sold ^(A)the people of Judah and Jerusalem to the Greeks in order to remove them far from their own border.

³ and ^(A)have cast lots for my people, and have traded a boy for a prostitute, and have sold a girl for wine and have drunk it.

⁸ and said to them, “We, as far as we are able, ^(A)have bought back our Jewish brothers who have been sold to the nations, but you even sell your brothers that they may be sold to us!” They were silent and could not find a word to say.

Nehemiah Stops Oppression of the Poor

5 Now there arose ^(A)a great outcry of the people and of their wives ^(B)against their Jewish brothers. ² For there were those who said, “With our sons and our daughters, we are many. So let us get grain, that we may eat and keep alive.” ³ There were also those who said, “We are mortgaging our fields, our vineyards, and our houses to get grain because of the famine.” ⁴ And there were those who said, “We have borrowed money for ^(C)the king's tax on our fields and our vineyards. ⁵ Now ^(D)our flesh is as the flesh of our brothers, our children are as their children. Yet ^(E)we are forcing our sons and our daughters to be slaves, and some of our daughters have already been enslaved, but it is not in our power to help it, for other men have our fields and our vineyards.”

^39 (A)“If your brother becomes poor beside you and sells himself to you, you shall not make him serve as a slave: ⁴⁰ he shall be with you as a hired worker and as a sojourner. He shall serve with you until the year of the jubilee. ^41 (B)Then he shall go out from you, ^(C)he and his children with him, and go back to his own clan and return ^(D)to the possession of his fathers. ⁴² For they are ^(E)my servants,^[a] whom I brought out of the land of Egypt; they shall not be sold as slaves.