2BC BIBLE STUDY NOTES

Wednesday in the Word

Second Baptist Church

July 3, 2019

Leviticus 27:1-27

1. The final few matters talked about in Leviticus revolve around the operation of the Wilderness Tabernacle, but later would be a fixed building, the Temple. This chapter deals with the several major categories of sanctuary funding: pledges of silver and animals, consecration of real property like houses and land, giving of firstborn animals and first fruits of crops, donation of property and tithing. What we find as we read this chapter is that, in general, the goal was for the priesthood who operated the sanctuary (more often than not) to obtain silver so as to purchase whatever was needed for maintenance and operation. Therefore, we will see a schedule of values drawn up in which various pledges of land, and animals...even PEOPLE...could be exchanged for silver. That is, the idea was that a vow would be made to give thus and so to the sanctuary, and then that person would turn around and REDEEM...buy back... whatever it was he had given. How much would it cost to redeem these things? That is one of the matters this chapter deals with. We also need to realize that this is looking ahead to the time when Israel was settled in the Land and living a very different kind of life than the nomadic one they were currently experiencing. Common sense dictates that Israel's circumstances would be radically different once they conquered Canaan and they had a permanent home. So, let me be clear: the rules and regulations contained in chapter 27 are constructed in such a way as to make it the NORM that MOST of what the Sanctuary received was silver, money, something easier to exchange than animals and field crops for needed supplies.

2. Verses 1-8. In verse 1, we find that the item of value (as part of the vow) was a human being. Now, don’t get the idea that a man has offered a slave he owns; rather, this is a case where a person offers HIM or HER self. And what is actually being offered is that person’s service to the Temple. Now in reality giving service to the Temple was only rarely even possible. This was because God had ordained that ONLY Levites and priests could serve at the Temple; an ordinary Jew could not. Since in most cases this person who vowed "himself" to Sanctuary service was not going to ever be able to carry out the vow because he was restricted by regulation from doing it, what was left was to redeem the vow. And verses 3-8 explain how the priest was to arrive at a proper evaluation of the amount of money for that person who took the vow to come up with in order to redeem himself. In a nutshell: men from 20-60 years of age had to pay 50 shekels; women of the same age, 30 shekels. Boy children from 5-20 years old had to pay 20 shekels, girls of the same age range, 10. Infants and toddlers, from 1 month to 5 years, 5 shekels for a boy, 3 or a girl. An elderly person, over 60 years of age, 15 shekels for a male, 10 for a female. Now this may not sound like a lot but it was a substantial amount of money. In this era, the wages for one month's work was about ONE shekel. So it cost a mature male better than 4 full years of wages to redeem himself from his vow of service to God. Think of one shekel as one month and you get the idea. Rabbis call this chart of values set down in Leviticus 27 the principle of equivalents.

3. Verses 9-13. We move from redeeming pledged people to redeeming pledged animals. The idea was that a person could pledge an animal as part of his or her vow offering, and then turn around and redeem that animal; the cost to do it, though, was 120% of its value. In other words, a 20% surcharge was added for a person to redeem an animal they had pledged. Whatever the priests decided was the proper value for an animal surely MUST have carried over into the marketplace. There would not have been one value for an animal offered-up and another for the same animal simply bought and sold in an everyday transaction. So the priests were administers of justice AND had a hand in setting the market price for animals, along with their Temple duties. The idea behind verse 9, where it says that any animal brought as an offering to the Lord may NOT be redeemed, simply brings us back to a principle we learned several months back: the principle of holy property. When it says here that this animal is “holy,” it means that it becomes God's holy property. So the reason this animal can't be redeemed is because it ALREADY has been transferred to God. And once it belongs to God, there is no getting it back. A person who would attempt to do so would be violating God's holy property and the penalty for this is death. Further a person who designates an animal for sacrifice as part of a vow can't later substitute it with another animal; not even an animal of greater value. Another part of the principle of holy property is that at some point in the process of the owner determining WHICH of his animals he will offer, it's a done deal. And this can be BEFORE he even brings that animal to the Temple. In another words the choice of animal to be given can simply be a mental decision upon which no action has yet been taken; but at that point of decision the animal becomes God's holy property. IF a person should TRY and make a substitution, the priest is instructed to keep BOTH animals. Why? Because now BOTH have been devoted to God and so both are holy property. The first animal discussed (since it was suitable for altar sacrifice) was, by definition, a ritually CLEAN animal. Verse 11 talks about a ritually UNCLEAN animal being used for a vow offering; and we see that this is perfectly acceptable. Automatically, however, it means that this animal will be exchanged for money since the unclean animal cannot be used for sacrifice nor do the priests eat it. And, as is standard, a 20% surcharge of the animal's value is added to the cost to redeem it.

4. Verses 14-25. Verse 14 shifts from redeeming human and animal life to inanimate objects. And the word used up to now to designate these humans and animals as vow offerings changes. The term changes to consecrations. In other words, these things are set apart for God not necessarily as part of a vow but perhaps more as a freewill gift. Thus if someone consecrates his house but wants to get it back, it costs him 120% of the market value. Next is what happens if someone consecrates LAND. The value of the land is determined by what the potential crop value is as we've learned in earlier lessons. Of course, we saw this in chapter 25 that dealt with Jubilee. Further, even though it is the Sanctuary, operated by the priests, that gets the benefit of the land the laws of Jubilee still apply. The price for redemption of the land by its owner is based on the number of years’ worth of crops it will produce before the next Jubilee; and upon the year of Jubilee, the original land owner gets his land back.

5. Verses 26-27. The next type of offering discussed is called firstlings; that is in the sense of first fruits or firstborn. And the rule is that since ALL first fruits or firstborns (of animals OR people) belong by default to the Lord, then they CANNOT be consecrated. In other words, nobody can give to the Lord, as a consecrated item, something that's already been consecrated. You can't give something that already belongs to God, as though it is an additional offering. That said this applies only to CLEAN things: things that have been declared ritually clean and suitable for sacrifice before Jehovah. UNCLEAN things (unclean animals in this case) indeed CAN be consecrated to the Lord but they MUST be redeemed and then the money given in its stead. As an example, a person can consecrate an unclean animal (say a camel for instance), BUT that person MUST redeem it OR the priest sells the animal to another for money. However, the PRICE that must be charged for that animal is 20% above its usual market value.

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