In the current literature concerning Jewish law and legal practice in Ptolemaic Egypt it is often remarked that Jewish residents of Ptolemaic Egypt charged interest in their business dealings with each other in contrast to the (alleged) unanimous injunctions from the Torah that prohibit these actions (i.e., Exod 22:24(25); Lev 25:36–37; Deut 23:20–21[19–20a]). One such law, Exod 22:24(25), translates the term לוה (“to lend” [Hiphil]) with the rare term ἐκδανείζω. ἐκδανείζω appears only elsewhere in LXX materials in the parallel law at Deut 23:20(19)b. In that verse the translator renders the Hebrew term נשך, “to lend on interest,” with both ἐκτοκίζω and ἐκδανείζω. The former, ἐκτοκίζω, is unquestionably defined as “lend at interest.” The latter, ἐκδανείζω, has not been given the same definition in Septuagint studies broadly. Modern Septuagint commentators have translated ἐκδανείζω as equivalent to the far more common term δανείζω, which means “to lend.” Exacting interest is not part of the lexical meaning of ἐκδανείζω according to contemporary biblical scholarship. Through an examination of ἐκδανείζω in the contemporary documentary evidence and the secondary literature concerning it, the present study suggests ἐκδανείζω should be defined as “lend with interest.” This gloss is the consensus definition of ἐκδανείζω in the secondary literature for the documentary sources. That ἐκδανείζω means “to lend with interest” is significant because many understand the Hebrew text of Exod 22:24(25) to prohibit lending with any interest to Jewish kinsfolk. However, if ἐκδανείζω means “lend with interest,” then G would translate with the opposite meaning, that is, “if you lend money with interest.”
If this conclusion is sustained, Old Greek Exod 22:24(25) might then be an adaptation to Greco-Egyptian legal practice through the use of ἐκδανείζω, and this at the expense of the meaning of the Hebrew text. Jewish residents of Ptolemaic Egypt have long been known to have charged loans to each other with interest according to Greek standards. To allow charging with interest in Exod 22:24(25) fits that milieu. Furthermore, the many claims in the secondary literature that Ptolemaic Egyptian Jews charged interest in contrast to Mosaic law may have been somewhat misinformed. The Greek version of that Mosaic law would include charging with interest, at least in Exodus. The rest of Exod 22:24(25) can also be translated in a way that supports this conclusion. Implications can then be inferred about how some diasporic Jews were interpreting legal texts in the Hebrew Bible in the third century BCE.