Leviticus 27: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The LORD gives Moses rules for vows and gifts made to the LORD: a set price in silver for a person, according to age and sex, with a lower price set by the priest for someone too poor to pay. Rules follow for animals clean and unclean, for a house, and for a field, with the price of a field figured against the year of jubilee. The chapter also covers firstborn animals, things devoted, and the tithe of crops and herds, and it ends by saying these are the commands the LORD gave Moses for Israel at Mount Sinai.

Claim by Claim

1. 27:1
   • The LORD spoke to Moses.
   • The LORD told Moses to say the following.
2. 27:2
   • Moses was to speak to the children of Israel.
   • The case is a man making a special vow.
   • The vow concerns persons dedicated to the LORD at a set valuation.
3. 27:3
   • The valuation applies to a male from twenty years old to sixty years old.
   • That valuation is fifty shekels of silver.
   • The valuation is measured by the shekel of the sanctuary.
4. 27:4
   • If the person is female, the valuation is thirty shekels.
5. 27:5
   • For a person from five years old to twenty years old, the valuation of a male is twenty shekels.
   • For a female of that age the valuation is ten shekels.
6. 27:6
   • For a person from one month old to five years old, the valuation of a male is five shekels of silver.
   • For a female of that age the valuation is three shekels of silver.
7. 27:7
   • For a person sixty years old and above, the valuation of a male is fifteen shekels.
   • For a female of that age the valuation is ten shekels.
8. 27:8
   • If the person is too poor for the set valuation, he is to be presented before the priest.
   • The priest shall set his value.
   • The priest shall value him according to what the one who vowed can afford.
9. 27:9
   • The case is an animal of a kind that people bring as an offering to the LORD.
   • Anything of that kind given to the LORD shall be holy.
10. 27:10
    • He shall not replace it.
    • He shall not exchange it, good for bad or bad for good.
    • If he does exchange one animal for another, both the animal and its substitute shall be holy.
11. 27:11
    • The case is an unclean animal, of a kind not offered as an offering to the LORD.
    • He shall present the animal before the priest.
12. 27:12
    • The priest shall value it, whether good or bad.
    • The value the priest sets is the value that stands.
13. 27:13
    • If the owner redeems it, he shall add a fifth to the valuation.
14. 27:14
    • The case is a man consecrating his house as holy to the LORD.
    • The priest shall value it, whether good or bad.
    • The value the priest sets is the value that stands.
15. 27:15
    • If the one who consecrated the house redeems it, he shall add a fifth of the money of the valuation to it.
    • The house shall then be his.
16. 27:16
    • The case is a man consecrating to the LORD part of a field he holds as his possession.
    • The valuation shall be according to the seed required for it.
    • A homer of barley seed is valued at fifty shekels of silver.
17. 27:17
    • If he consecrates his field from the year of jubilee, the valuation stands as set.
18. 27:18
    • If he consecrates his field after the jubilee, the priest shall reckon the money according to the years remaining until the year of jubilee.
    • The amount shall be reduced from the valuation.
19. 27:19
    • If the one who consecrated the field redeems it, he shall add a fifth of the money of the valuation to it.
    • The field shall then be secured to him.
20. 27:20
    • If he does not redeem the field, it shall not be redeemed any more.
    • If he has sold the field to another man, it shall not be redeemed any more.
21. 27:21
    • When the field is released in the jubilee, it shall be holy to the LORD.
    • It shall be like a field devoted to the LORD.
    • Its possession shall belong to the priest.
22. 27:22
    • The case is a man consecrating to the LORD a field he has bought, which is not part of his own inherited possession.
23. 27:23
    • The priest shall reckon for him the amount of the valuation up to the year of jubilee.
    • The man shall give the valuation that day.
    • The payment is a holy thing to the LORD.
24. 27:24
    • In the year of jubilee the field shall return to the one from whom it was bought.
    • That one is the man to whom the possession of the land belonged.
25. 27:25
    • All valuations shall be according to the shekel of the sanctuary.
    • The shekel shall be twenty gerahs.
26. 27:26
    • No man shall consecrate a firstborn of the animals, because it is already the LORD's as a firstborn.
    • This applies whether the animal is an ox or a sheep.
    • The firstborn belongs to the LORD.
27. 27:27
    • If the animal is of an unclean kind, he shall redeem it according to the valuation.
    • He shall add a fifth of its value to it.
    • If it is not redeemed, it shall be sold according to the valuation.
28. 27:28
    • A thing devoted, which a man devotes to the LORD out of all he has, shall not be sold.
    • It shall not be redeemed.
    • This applies to devoted persons, animals, and fields of a man's possession.
    • Every devoted thing is most holy to the LORD.
29. 27:29
    • A person devoted from among human beings shall not be ransomed.
    • That person shall surely be put to death.
30. 27:30
    • All the tithe of the land belongs to the LORD.
    • This includes the seed of the land and the fruit of the tree.
    • The tithe is holy to the LORD.
31. 27:31
    • If a man redeems any of his tithe, he shall add a fifth to it.
32. 27:32
    • The tithe of the herd and of the flock is counted from whatever passes under the rod.
    • Every tenth animal shall be holy to the LORD.
33. 27:33
    • He shall not inspect whether it is good or bad.
    • He shall not exchange it.
    • If he does exchange it, both the animal and its substitute shall be holy.
    • It shall not be redeemed.
34. 27:34
    • These are the commandments the LORD commanded Moses for the children of Israel.
    • The commandments were given at Mount Sinai.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

27:1

The King James prints "LORD" in capital letters when the Hebrew has God's own personal name, not just the word for God.

27:2

A vow of this kind pledged a person (the one making the vow, or someone in his household) to the LORD's service at the sanctuary. In practice the pledge was settled in silver rather than by handing the person over, and this chapter sets the fixed price for each category. The figures are a tariff for discharging the vow, not a statement about what a human life is worth.

27:3

A shekel was not a coin but a weight of silver, about 11.5 grams (two-fifths of an ounce); silver was weighed out on scales. Fifty shekels was a very large sum, Judges 17:10 has a man hired for ten shekels a year plus food and clothing. "The shekel of the sanctuary" means the official standard weight kept at the sanctuary, as opposed to the varying local weights merchants used.

27:5

The different amounts follow the work a person could do at each age. They are not saying one person matters more than another.

27:6

Babies under one month old are not listed at all. Infant deaths in the first weeks were common, and a child was not counted in this kind of reckoning until it had survived a month.

27:8

The sliding scale here means no vow was void for poverty: the priest reassessed the amount against what the man could actually pay.

27:9

"Holy" here is not a description of character but of ownership and status: the animal has passed out of ordinary use and belongs to the sanctuary. The same term runs through the whole chapter.

27:11

"Unclean" means ritually unfit for the altar, not dirty or diseased. Pigs, camels, donkeys and horses fell into this class. Such an animal could not be sacrificed, so it was valued in silver instead and the money went to the sanctuary.

27:12

"Whether it is good or bad" is an idiom for "high or low", the priest fixes the price wherever it honestly falls, without favor.

27:13

"Buy it back" translates a term usually rendered "redeem": paying a price to recover something that has passed into the sanctuary's ownership. The extra fifth, a twenty per cent surcharge, is the standard penalty throughout this chapter for taking back what has been given.

27:14

"Sets apart" means formally transferring ownership of the property to the sanctuary. The house itself was not moved or occupied by priests; its assessed value in silver was what the sanctuary received.

27:15

One fifth more means a little extra. If it cost five coins, he paid one more.

27:16

Farmland was measured by how much seed it took to sow, not by area, a practical measure, since the yield mattered more than the acreage. A homer was roughly 220 liters, about six bushels, and would sow perhaps four or five acres.

27:17

The jubilee was the fiftieth year, when farmland in Israel reverted to the family that had originally been allotted it and Israelites sold into debt-servitude went free (Leviticus 25). Because no one could sell land permanently, only the harvests up to the next jubilee, a field's price was always a function of how many years remained.

27:18

Because of the Jubilee, land was really rented, not sold forever. The fewer years left, the less it cost.

27:21

"Devoted" renders a distinct Hebrew term (herem) for something irrevocably handed over, a stronger category than merely set apart, and one that could not be bought back. See verse 28.

27:22

"Land he owns by family right" is ancestral land, the plot allotted to a man's clan when Israel settled the country; it stayed in the family permanently. A field bought from someone else was only leased until the next jubilee, when it returned to the original family, so the buyer could only give away what he actually held.

27:25

A gerah was the smallest unit of weight, about half a gram, a twentieth of a shekel. The verse fixes the standard so the priest's valuations could not be shaded by using a lighter shekel.

27:26

Under existing law the first male born to each cow, ewe or goat already belonged to the LORD (Exodus 13:2, 12). A man could not therefore offer it as though it were his own gift and gain credit for it.

27:28

This paragraph shifts from ordinary consecration to the herem, translated "devoted": a permanent, irreversible transfer with no buy-back price. In other passages the same word covers things placed under a ban in war and destroyed. Whether an individual could place another human being under this ban, and under what circumstances, is disputed and the text does not spell it out.

27:29

This verse is the hardest in the chapter and its scope is contested. It may refer to persons already under a sentence of destruction (captured enemies placed under a ban, or someone condemned under law) stating only that money cannot buy such a sentence off. It is not read here as license to devote a person to death at will, but the Hebrew does not settle the question on its own.

27:30

A tithe was a tenth of the year's produce, owed as a standing due rather than given voluntarily; it supported the priests and Levites, who held no farmland of their own.

27:31

Grain and fruit could be converted to silver, useful for a farmer living far from the sanctuary, but at a fifth above the market value, so paying in kind was always cheaper.

27:32

Shepherds counted a flock by making the animals file out one at a time under a held-out staff, tallying as they passed. Every tenth animal to pass was the LORD's, which is why verse 33 forbids inspecting them: the count, not the owner's judgment, chose the animal.

27:34

This closing line ends the book of Leviticus, tying the whole collection of laws back to the covenant made at Mount Sinai in Exodus.