Deuteronomy 33:19

lend upon usury exact interest; the Eng. usuryformerly meant like the Lat. usurano more than interest. Heb. neshekis lit. something bitten off; the denom. vb. is to take, or makeone pay, interest.

usury of money, etc.] The loans were more frequently in kind.

They call … There they offer] Their markets for their trade with other tribes or peoples were also religious festivals, a combination characteristic of the Semitic world (as of others even in modern times) and illustrated at Sinai, Jerusalem, Bethel (videAmos), Hierapolis and Mecca. The mountainmay have been Carmel or Tabor; but the text is uncertain. LXX have a verb followed by andwhich suggests the Heb. yaḥdaw= together, instead of the awkwardly constructed har= mountain. Sacrifices of righteousnessare of course the legal, dueor fitting sacrifices. Sam. s. of truth.

abundance This form of the Heb. term is found only here; but it occurs in Aram. The lit. meaning is flowing; render affluence, profusion(LXX πλοῦτος); all that the Phoenicians drew from the sea their sea-borne trade and fisheries and possibly the dredging for sponges still carried on off -Athlit and Carmel.

of the seas Plur. as often in poetry, Judges 5:17; Genesis 49:13.

And the hidden treasures, etc.] The Heb. construction (confirmed by Sam.) is awkward, and perhaps we should read a finite vb instead of the participle hidden: and gather(or scrape, cp. Ar. safan) the hoards of the sand. The reference is either to the manufacture of glass which took place on the sands S. of "Akka (Josephus, II. Bell. Judges 10:2; Tacitus, Hist.Deuteronomy 33:7; Pliny, Hist. Nat.Deuteronomy 33:17, xxxvi. 65) or to the production of purple from the murex (Pliny, H.N.ix. 60 65) large quantities of the emptied shells of which are still found about Tyre.