Hebrew word · H5378

נָשָׁא

noshe'

to exact

This is a participle of a root meaning to lend on interest or to press a debtor for payment. The participle means 'creditor,' 'one who exacts.' A related form, nosheh, is the creditor in 2 Kings 4:1, who comes to take a widow's two children as slaves, and in Isaiah 50:1.

Appears 3 times in 3 verses of the Hebrew Old Testament. ·

What it means

1) to lend on interest or usury, be a creditor

1a) (Qal) creditor (participle)

1b) (Hiphil) to act as a creditor

Abridged from Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906), via STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).

In depth

From the study of 1 Samuel 22:2

Range of meaning

This is a participle of a root meaning to lend on interest or to press a debtor for payment. The participle means 'creditor,' 'one who exacts.' A related form, nosheh, is the creditor in 2 Kings 4:1, who comes to take a widow's two children as slaves, and in Isaiah 50:1. The related noun mashsheʾ means a loan or debt claim (Neh 5:7, 10).

Against the English

KJV, WEB, NIV, NASB and BSB all render it 'in debt' or 'indebted.' That is correct, but it flips the Hebrew phrasing. The Hebrew is literally 'every man who had a creditor,' which puts the creditor in view. YLT's 'who hath an exactor' keeps the menace.

How it drifted

Modern debt is mostly an inconvenience under legal protection. In Iron Age Israel a defaulting debtor could lose his family land, his children could be taken as debt-slaves (2 Kgs 4:1; Neh 5:5), and he could be sold himself (Exod 21:2; Lev 25:39). 'In debt' sounds far milder to a modern reader.

Used elsewhere in the period

Debt-slavery and creditors seizing family members are well attested across the ancient Near East: Mesopotamian law collections such as Hammurabi §117, and the release (andurārum) edicts of Old Babylonian kings. Israelite law tried to limit it with the seventh-year release (Deut 15:1–2, where the creditor is called baʿal mashsheh). The Greek Septuagint renders our verse with hypochreōs, 'under obligation, indebted.'

Where it appears

1 Samuel · 1

  1. 1 Samuel 22:2 נֹשֶׁא֙ a creditor

    And all who were distressed or indebted or discontented rallied around him, and he became their leader. About four hundred men were with him.

    Here: 'A creditor,' literally 'one who exacts.' The man is defined by the person pressing him for repayment. In Israel that could mean losing land, his children or his own freedom.

1 Kings · 1

  1. 1 Kings 8:31 וְנָֽשָׁא־ and he will impose

    When a man sins against his neighbor and is required to take an oath, and he comes to take an oath before Your altar in this temple,

Isaiah · 1

  1. Isaiah 24:2 נֹשֶׁ֥א a creditor

    people and priest alike, servant and master, maid and mistress, buyer and seller, lender and borrower, creditor and debtor.

Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.