Leviticus 27 Back to blog

Leviticus 27

20 Aug 2026 - Theology

Jesus the High Priest


The last chapter in Leviticus explains how sacrifices were turned into the money needed to operate and maintain the Tabernacle and its priests. While offerings of animals and of grain have already been addressed, this chapter details how “alternative” offerings could be valued.

For example, if a man decided to give his house to the Lord, the priests would first assess it to find out how much it is worth. The man could then “buy back” his house from the priests with silver shekels, and that money would be considered as an offering for the Tabernacle. He would give the amount that the priests stated, and add one-fifth (%20) to it. In this way, a man could “donate” his house, but the actual donation was the value of the house in silver shekels.

People could pledge anything of value to the Lord, and whatever was pledged was paid in shekels. If a person was poor and wanted to pledge something to the Lord, the priests would charge an amount based on what the person could afford.

If a male between the ages of 20 and 60 was pledged, then the amount to be given to the Lord was “fifty shekels of silver by the sanctuary weight”. For a female of the same age, the amount was thirty shekels. A male from 5 to 20 years old was worth 20 shekels, and a female worth 10 shekels. A male child from one month to five years old was woth five shekels, and a female child was worth three shekels. (3-7)

This raises the question: why are men valued more than women? As human beings first formed communities, they usually found that they needed warriors to protect them or to conquer territories. Men were thus thought to be more important than women because they were the warriors. Women were still important - to protect the young and sometimes even to fight beside their men when battles went badly. But it was the men who ruled in warrior tribes. At this point, the people of Israel were still in the desert and hadn’t yet reached the Promised Land (the land they would have to fight for). Later on, when communities settled down and fighting was no longer the primary measure of worth, women gained in equality. In fact, in a few societies where women were the warriors or served equally in wartime, women were considered more important or entirely equal to men.

Some things can not be pledged to the Lord because they already belong to the Lord. The firstborn of an animal already belongs to the Lord. Anything already pledged by one person can not be pledged again by another. One-tenth of all crops - grain or fruit, herd or flock - already belongs to the Lord, so it can not be pledged a seond time. But it can be “bought back” from the Lord by paying the value in shekles and adding one-fifth.

The book of Leviticus then closes with one simple verse:

Leviticus 27:34 - “These are the commandments, which the Lord commanded Moses for the children of Israel in mount Sinai.”

Repeated Themes

You may have noticed that many themes or even individual commands seem to be repeated multiple times in Leviticus. Scholars have identified a large scale chiasm that covers the entire book of Leviticus.

Regardless of who the author of Leviticus is, or if there are many authors, this chiasm still exists, even though entire chapters seem out of order.

What is fascinating to me is that Leviticus is not just a book of laws. The book of Leviticus is the middle of a chiasm of the five books of the Torah. Leviticus itself is a chiasm, with its middle being Leviticus 16, the Day of Atonement. And Leviticus 16 is a chiasm, with its middle being a few verses where the High Priest makes atonement for the sins of the people.

Leviticus 16, the book of Leviticus itself, and the entire Torah emphasizes the truth of the gospel that Jesus is the High Priest who atones for us, taking our sin and forgiving it.

References

  1. Spiros Zodhiates (Editor), The Hebrew - Greek Key Study Bible: King James Version (2008)
  2. Rabbi Seymour Rossel, The Torah Portion-by-Portion (2007)
  3. The BEMA Podcast, Episode 25: A Kingdom of What?




Leviticus 26 Leviticus (Summary)