Deuteronomy 15:6

will bless thee Heb. is stronger, shall have blessed thee.

thou shalt lend unto many nations, but thou shalt not borrow Heb. shalt take, but shalt not give, pledges; cp. 8, Deuteronomy 24:10-13. This promise of a large foreign commerce, repeated Deuteronomy 28:12 f. (with the contrast in 43 f.) is peculiar to D among the codes of Israel. It covers, of course, not only the lending of money and bullion (banking proper), but the sale of goods on credit at interest, to other nations. Such a foreign trade appears to have flourished with great profit both to Judah and Israel under the long contemporary reigns of Uzziah and Jeroboam II (Isaiah 2:7; Hosea 12:7). There was large commerce with foreigners under Manasseh: cp. Ezekiel's name for Jerusalem, the gate of the peoples(Deuteronomy 26:2, LXX), and the king of Persia's refusal to allow the walls of Jerusalem to be rebuilt lest her former power of exacting tolls and customs should revive (Ezra 4:20). It is striking, however, that the fulfilment of D's promise was most fully realised not while Israel remained on their own land but after their dispersion among the nations, from the Greek period onwards. Strabo's words (quoted in Jos. XIV. Antt.vii. 2) are a remarkable acknowledgement of the political as well as financial superiority foreseen by D for Israel: -These Jews have penetrated to every city and it would not be easy to find a single place in the inhabited world which has not received this race, and where it has not become master." See further Jerusalem, i. 370 f., ii. 193 f., 392 ff.