Leviticus27chapter 27

Leviticus 27:1-8

Chapter 26 closed the laws with a formal signature at 26:46, and this chapter follows it with a schedule of prices. The vow it governs is the one act in Leviticus that no man is commanded to perform, and Deuteronomy 23:22 leaves a man free to forbear it. The figures run by age and by sex, fifty shekels down to three, and the text gives no reason for any of them. Verse 8 bends the whole table for a man poorer than the estimation, since the priest values him according to his ability, so the price follows what the man actually has.

Leviticus 27:9-13

A clean beast once vowed is holy and stays that animal, and swapping it for another makes both of them holy, so the attempt to trade doubles the gift. An unclean beast is brought to the priest, who sets its worth, and an owner who wants it back pays that worth plus a fifth. The added fifth falls five times in this chapter, at verses 13, 15, 19, 27 and 31, and it is the same surcharge Leviticus 5:16 and 6:5 lay on a man making restitution for a trespass. Taking back what was given to God is priced the way damage is priced.

Leviticus 27:14-21

A house is valued by the priest and bought back with a fifth added, and a field of a man's inheritance is valued by the seed it takes, an homer of barley seed at fifty shekels. The price is reckoned against the jubilee clock, standing full when the vow falls at the jubilee and abated by the years already spent. Verses 20 and 21 give the one route by which inherited land leaves a family for good, since a field left unredeemed becomes the priest's possession at the jubilee. Leviticus 25:13 sends every man back to his possession in that year, and here the same year takes a field away.

Leviticus 27:22-25

A field a man bought is handled on different terms from a field he inherited. He pays its worth up to the jubilee on the day he vows it, and at the jubilee the land goes back to the family it came from, so he gives away only the years he actually holds. Verse 25 fastens every figure in the chapter to one weight, the shekel of the sanctuary at twenty gerahs, which Exodus 30:13 had already fixed.

Leviticus 27:26-29

A firstling already belongs to the LORD, so no man may vow it, and the rule shuts the door on offering God what is His already. Verse 28 marks off the devoted thing, the Hebrew cherem, which stands outside sale and outside redemption at any price. Verse 29 then says that none devoted of men shall be redeemed but shall surely be put to death, and it explains itself nowhere. Adam Clarke reads it of persons already under a judicial ban, Matthew Henry raises Jephthah's daughter at Judges 11 as a case of the law being misread, and John Wesley limits it to what a man has lawful power over, while the verse gives one sentence and no case.

Leviticus 27:30-33

The tithe is described as the LORD's before anybody hands it over, so the tenth is acknowledged rather than given. A man may buy back part of his crop tithe by adding the fifth, and the tithe of the herd carries no such clause. Verse 33 forbids searching the flock for a better animal and makes both the beast and its replacement holy if he swaps, so the tenth is whatever passes under the rod when the count reaches ten. Abram paid tithes to Melchizedek at Genesis 14:20 and Jacob vowed them at Genesis 28:22, so the practice reaches this book already formed.

Leviticus 27:34

One sentence signs off the whole book, and it names Sinai as the place the commandments were given. Leviticus opened with the LORD calling to Moses out of the tent at 1:1, and it ends by putting every word of it back on the mountain. A book about how a man comes near to God closes on a table of what a promise costs, and the last thing it prices is the offering a man brings of his own will.