Exodus30chapter 30

The half shekel commanded in this chapter became the yearly Temple tax, and the payment of it shaped the month before Passover. The Mishnah records that the money changers' tables were set up in the Temple itself from the twenty fifth of the month Adar (Mishnah Shekalim 1:3). The exchange was needed because the tax was paid in approved silver rather than in Roman coin. This site carries that record and its citation at src/lib/hebraic/feasts.ts, on the money changers a Christian reader meets in John 2.

The chapter gives the golden altar, the half shekel, the laver, the oil and the incense. Rashi marks the golden altar off from the bronze one by its top, since the altar of burnt offering was filled with earth at each camp (Rashi on Exodus 30:3:1). He fixes its place exactly in front of the ark and outside the veil (Rashi on Exodus 30:6:1). The trimming of the lamps is the cleaning of the bowls each morning from the ashes of the wicks that burned through the night (Rashi on Exodus 30:7:1). On the census he reads the command as a rule against counting heads. Each man gives half a shekel, and the coins are counted instead (Rashi on Exodus 30:12:1). The best known traditional insight on this chapter is his next line. God showed Moses "a kind of fiery coin the weight of which was half a shekel" and said that they should give like it (Rashi on Exodus 30:13:1, citing Midrash Tanchuma, Ki Tisa 9). The age of twenty is read as the age of the army and of the count (Rashi on Exodus 30:14:1). The atonement of the fifteenth verse he takes two ways. It guards against plague at a census, and it atones for sin, with three heave offerings alluded to in the wording (Rashi on Exodus 30:15:1). The priests washed hands and feet together, the right hand laid on the right foot and the left on the left (Rashi on Exodus 30:19:1, citing Zevachim 19b). Rashi is quoted from the Rosenbaum and Silbermann edition of 1929 to 1934, public domain. His comment at Exodus 30:16:1 stands in the corpus as a reference, because the text fetch returned nothing for it. Ibn Ezra comments at Exodus 30:2:1, 30:5:1, 30:17:1 and 30:22:1 under a licence that keeps his text off this page.

The corpus records forty places where the Midrash and the Talmud draw on this chapter, cited here by reference. The half shekel and the census are read in the Jerusalem Talmud at Megillah 1:5:5 and Taanit 1:1:18, and in Bekhorot 50a:3. Bamidbar Rabbah reads them at 10:1, and the altar and the laver at 6:3, 12:13, 14:10, 14:19 and 14:21. It reads the oil at 15:17 and 18:9. The washing of hands and feet stands in the Jerusalem Talmud at Yoma 2:1:9 and 3:6:3, at Challah 1:6:1 and at Arakhin 19b:5. The anointing oil and the incense are read at Makkot 14b:2 and Bava Batra 75a:2, and in the Jerusalem Talmud at Makkot 2:6:1, Shekalim 4:3:1 and 4:4:2. Chullin 139b:12 reads the spices, and Ein Yaakov, Keritot 1:3 the incense. Sifra reads the anointing at Tzav, Chapter 1 11, and Sifrei Devarim at 76:8. Avot DeRabbi Natan 1:2 reads the priesthood of the thirtieth verse.