Leviticus 27:18

spake unto Moses, saying, 2 Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When a man shall make a singular vow, the persons shall be for the LORD by thy estimation. 3 And thy estimation shall be of the male from twenty years old even unto sixty years old, even thy estimation shall be fifty shekels of silver, after the shekel of the sanctuary. 4 And if it be a female, then thy estimation shall be thirty shekels. 5 And if it be from five years old even unto twenty years old, then thy estimation shall be of the male twenty shekels, and for the female ten shekels. 6 And if it be from a month old even unto five years old, then thy estimation shall be of the male five shekels of silver, and for the female thy estimation shall be three shekels of silver. 7 And if it be from sixty years old and above; if it be a male, then thy estimation shall be fifteen shekels, and for the female ten shekels. 8 But if he be poorer than thy estimation, then he shall present himself before the priest, and the priest shall value him; according to his ability that vowed shall the priest value him. 9 And if it be a beast, whereof men bring an offering unto the LORD, all that any man giveth of such unto the LORD shall be holy. 10 He shall not alter it, nor change it, a good for a bad, or a bad for a good: and if he shall at all change beast for beast, then it and the exchange thereof shall be holy. 11 And if it be any unclean beast, of which they do not offer a sacrifice unto the LORD, then he sh

But if he sanctify his field after the jubilee,.... Some years after it, more or fewer, or it may be, when half way towards another jubilee, or nearer: then the priest shall reckon unto him the money according to the years that remain, even unto the year of the jubilee; thus, for instance, if it only required an homer of barley to sow it, and the whole value of it from jubilee to jubilee was but fifty shekels of silver; then supposing it to be sanctified in the middle of the fifty years, or at twenty five years' end, it was to be reckoned at twenty five shekels, and sold for that money, and so in proportion, reckoning a shekel for a year: and it shall be abated from thy estimation; not the year of jubilee, but a shekel for every year was to be deducted from the original value of fifty shekels, according to the number of years that had passed or were to come.

16-24. if a man shall sanctify unto the Lord some aprt of a field of his possession, &c.—In the case of acquired property in land, if not redeemed, it returned to the donor at the Jubilee; whereas the part of a hereditary estate, which had been vowed, did not revert to the owner, but remained attached in perpetuity to the sanctuary. The reason for this remarkable difference was to lay every man under an obligation to redeem the property, or stimulate his nearest kinsman to do it, in order to prevent a patrimonial inheritance going out from any family in Israel.

(18) But if he sanctify his field after the jubile. —If, however, the vow is made after the jubile, the priest is to value the field according to the number of years from the time of the vow to the next jubile year. And it shall be abated from thy estimation.—That is, the years which have elapsed since the last jubile up to the time when he made the vow are to be deducted from the jubile cycle, and hence so many shekels are to be taken off from the original valuation of fifty shekels. Thus, for instance, if he vowed the field at the estimated value of fifty shekels twenty years after the jubile, the priest is only to reckon the thirty years which have to run to the next jubile, and is to deduct twenty shekels for the twenty years which have elapsed since the last jubile. Accordingly, the vower would only have to pay thirty shekels, exclusive of the fifth part above the estimated value.

If he sanctified his field from the year of jubilee, i.e., immediately after the expiration of that year, it was to "stand according to thy valuation," i.e., no alteration was to be made in the valuation. But if it took place after the year of jubilee, i.e., some time or some years after, the priest was to estimate the value according to the number of years to the next year of jubilee, and "it shall be abated from thy valuation," sc., praeteritum tempus, the time that has elapsed since the year of jubilee. Hence, for example, if the field was vowed ten years after the year of jubilee, the man who wished to redeem it had only forty shekels to pay for the forty years remaining up to the next year of jubilee, or, with the addition of the fifth, 48 shekels. The valuation was necessary in both cases, for the hereditary field was inalienable, and reverted to the original owner or his heirs in the year of jubilee without compensation (cf. Leviticus 27:21 and Leviticus 25:13 , Leviticus 25:23 .); so that, strictly speaking, it was not the field itself, but the produce of its harvests up to the next year of jubilee, that was vowed, whether the person making the vow left it to the sanctuary in natura till the year of jubilee, or wished to redeem it again by paying the valuation price. In the latter case, however, he had to put a fifth over and above the valuation price ( Leviticus 27:19 , like Leviticus 27:13 and Leviticus 27:15 ), that it might be left to him.

[Reformed Biblical] t. Some conceive that this law was altered in ensuing ages, which they gather from Jer_32:7,8 Acts 4:36,37. But those examples do not prove it. That sale of Jeremiah’s was made by a particular dispensation and command of God, and that in a time when the Levites, as well as the people, were to be destroyed or dispersed, and carried into captivity, and therefore could receive no considerable injury by it; an d besides, this sale was only made formally and for signification, as it is explained, Lev_25:14,15. And for the land sold by Barnabas a Levite, Ac 4, as it was at a time when the Jewish church was dissolved, and their state upon the brink of utter rui n, so it is not evident that it was such suburb land, which would have yielded but a small price, b ut it might be o ther land, either such as he might have in right of his wife, or such as he might have purchased. For though the Levites in general had no other share of land beside this allotted them by God, yet it is conceived that particular Levites might purchase lands to themselves. Leviticus 25:35 ## Fallen in decay, Heb. his hand wavereth, of faileth ## or is decayed so that he hath not power to get or keep wealth, as the phrase is, Deu_8:18; as on the contrary, when a man is able, his hand is said to attain and find sufficiency , as here above, Lev_25:26. ## Relieve him, Heb. strengthen him , comfort his heart, and strengthen his hand. ## A sojourner; unders

[Reformed Biblical] Leviticus 27:12 Leviticus 27:13 Leviticus 27:14 ## Sanctify his house, to wit, by a vow, for of that way and manner of sanctification he speaks in this whole chapter. ## Holy uno the Lord; in which case the benefit of it redounded either to the priests, for their maintenance, Num_18:4, or to the sanctuary, for its reparations or expenses. ## So shall it stand; supposing that the priest’s estimation doth