The question of usury therefore attracted considerable attention in the teaching and practice of pagan antiquity. It occupied an equally important place in the Old Testament. In Exodus we find the first prohibition of usury: 'If thou lend money to any of my people being poor, thou shalt not be to him as a creditor, neither shall ye lay upon him usury.'[1] In Leviticus we read: 'And if thy brother be waxen poor, and his hand fail with thee; then, thou must uphold him; as a stranger and a sojourner shall he live with thee. Take thou no money of him or increase, but fear thy God that thy brother may live with thee. Thou shalt not give him thy money upon usury, nor give him victuals for increase.'[2] Deuteronomy lays down a wider prohibition: 'Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother; usury of money, usury of victuals, usury of anything that is lent upon usury; unto a foreigner thou mayest lend upon usury, but unto thy brother thou mayest not lend upon usury.'[3] It will be noticed that the first and second of these texts do not forbid usury except in the case of loans to the poor, and, if we had them alone to consider, we could conclude that loans to the rich or to business men were allowed. The last text, however, extends the prohibition to all loans to one's brother--an expression which was of importance in Christian times, as Christian writers maintained the universal brotherhood of man. [Footnote 1: Exod. xxii. 25.] [Footnote 2: Lev. xxv. 35.] [Footnote 3: Deut. xxiii. 19.] It is unnecessary for us to discuss the underlying considerations which prompted these ordinances. Dr. Cleary, who has studied the matter with great care, concludes that: 'The legislator was urged mostly by economic considerations.... The permission to extract usury from strangers--a permission which later writers, such as Maimonides, regarded as a command--clearly favours the view that the legislator was guided by economic principles. It is more difficult to say whether he based his legislation on the principle that usury is intrinsically unjust--that is to say, unjust even when taken in moderation. There is really nothing in the texts quoted to enable us to decide. The universality of the prohibition when there is question solely of Jews goes to show that usury as such was regarded as unjust; whilst its permission as between Jew and Gentile favours the contradictory hypothesis.'[1] Modern Jewish thought is inclined to hold the view that these prohibitions were based upon the assumption that usury was intrinsically unjust, but that the taking of usury from the Gentiles was justified on the principle of compensation; in other words, that Jews might exact usury from those who might exact it from them.[2] It is at least certain that usury was regarded by the writers of the Old Testament as amongst the most terrible of sins.[3] [Footnote 1: _Op. cit._, pp. 5-6.] [Footnote 2: _Jewish Encyclopaedia_, art. 'Usury.']