Nehemiah 5

A crisis erupts within: famine and Persian taxes have driven the poor to mortgage their fields and sell their children into slavery to their own wealthy countrymen. Nehemiah is angry, confronts the nobles for charging interest on their brothers, and demands they return everything and cancel the debts, which they swear to do. He himself, though entitled to the governor’s allowance, refuses it, feeds many at his own expense, and asks God to remember him for good.