consumption loans

the Biblical utterances against interest and usury clearly refer to loans made for consumption rather than investment purposes .Suppose I, a poor man , borrow from you , a rich man, so that I can eat more today or pay a hospital bill. (a) Is It fair that I should have to pay you interest ? (b) How do such consumption loans affect the short-run equilibrium interest rate ?
The answer to the second question will help answer the first . consumption lending is today less important than productive-investment lending ; therefore productive investment primarily determines the behavior of interest rate.
Now we can treat the fairness question.Are we assuming that there is effective competition in the money market for consumption loans so that no one-rich or poor-can take unfair monopoly advantage of anyone else by preventing him from borrowing at the cheapest available terms ? If we explicitly assume effective competition and that people will not rashly sacrifice their future well-being just to consume more now,then it is hard to see why there is anything more unfair about loan transactions between rich and poor than there would be in other competitive transactions between rich and poor,e.g.,when a rich butcher sells a poor consumer a pound of meat.of course,the poor man would rather pay nothing for the meat than have to pay a positive price .But ,being a scarce good,the meat commands a positive price and one that changes with supply and demand.The same holds for interest. If the existing distribution of income seems unfair to the populace ,the field of taxation would seem to offer the best remedies-not random interference with competitive loan or other transactions.