“Valuations of Persons”?
All-Church Bible Study is this Wednesday (03/04) at Asbury, 6:30-8:00 PM central.
There’s a strange paragraph in chapter 27. Let me quote it in full before commenting on it:
27:1 The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 2 “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, If anyone makes a special vow to the Lord involving the valuation of persons, 3 then the valuation of a male from twenty years old up to sixty years old shall be fifty shekels of silver, according to the shekel of the sanctuary. 4 If the person is a female, the valuation shall be thirty shekels. 5 If the person is from five years old up to twenty years old, the valuation shall be for a male twenty shekels, and for a female ten shekels. 6 If the person is from a month old up to five years old, the valuation shall be for a male five shekels of silver, and for a female the valuation shall be three shekels of silver. 7 And if the person is sixty years old or over, then the valuation for a male shall be fifteen shekels, and for a female ten shekels. 8 And if someone is too poor to pay the valuation, then he shall be made to stand before the priest, and the priest shall value him; the priest shall value him according to what the vower can afford. [Leviticus 27:1-8]
What is this about?
Here’s what’s going on. This is for when people came and wanted to make a commitment to God and a financial gift to the sanctuary to go along with it, and this paragraph sets out a way of standardizing the gifts. Men had more earning power than women, and older people had more earning power than younger people, so it was a sliding scale. And, if you were poor and couldn’t make a financial gift, the priest would say “Okay, X amount counts. Good for you.”
So, it would be like saying, “I am making this commitment before God, and to show that I’m taking it seriously, I will make the standard financial gift that is expected from someone of my age and situation in life.”
