Regarding ancient laws governing lending and interest
The Old Testament law was made for a ignorant, rebellious people roaming the desert and living in tents. There were no courts of law. No prisons. This undisciplined people of newly found liberty were primitive and illiterate.
But they would listen to God Almighty. Moses understood the mechanisms of capital. It was of advantage to the ancient Hebrews to lend amongst themselves at no interest, while lending to others at interest.
But the same laws that work for a primitive, unruly people wandering the desert, become overly generalized, restrictive, and needless to an industrialized civilization. In the past if someone owed a debt, he and his family could be sold into slavery, and all of his goods sold to pay the debt.
Today we have bankruptcy. If not for lending at interest, industrialized civilization would be impossible.The Bible says, Dt. 23:13 “and you shall have a spade among your tools, and it shall be when you sit down outside, you shall dig with it and shall turn to cover up your excrement.”
We disregard that law, because now we understand about microorganisms and sanitation. Similarly, ancient laws governing the proper use of wealth have yielded to new laws based on the old, but with added flexibility to accommodate a more complex and wealthy civilization.
As regards the beast of Revelation discussed briefly in the study: If the Greek spelling of Nero Caesar (stamped on a gold coin called the Nero aureus) (Neron Kaisar) is transliterated into Hebrew (nrwn qsr), the numerical equivalent is 666—although it should be remembered that this number was not represented as a figure but as letters of the alphabet or written in full. In other words, the “number of the beast” was not expressed as “666” (indeed, discrete Arabic numerals would not be invented for another five hundred years) but by the phrase hexakosioi hexekonta hex or the numerical values of the Greek letters themselves, chi (600), xi (60), and stigma (6).
Rev 13:18 Wisdom is needed here; one who understands can calculate the number of the beast …
So, it had to be someone who had lived or was living, or no amount of wisdom would reveal the name!