Currencies
Shekel
The shekel is a weight of silver used as money. The sanctuary shekel is twenty gerah. Gold for the sanctuary is twenty-nine talents and 730 shekels; census silver is a hundred talents and 1,775 shekels, one beqa (half a shekel) per head. At a census each Israelite twenty years and over pays half a shekel as ransom.
Category
Currencies
Value
Sanctuary shekel: twenty gerah; census ransom: half a shekel (one beqa)
First mention
Genesis 23:16
Scripture references
- Genesis 23:16
Abraham weighed out for Ephron ... four hundred shekels of silver, according to the current commercial rate.
- Genesis 37:28
They sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites for twenty shekels of silver, and these men took Joseph to Egypt.
- Genesis 45:22
To each and every one he gave new clothes, and to Benjamin three hundred shekels of silver and five changes of clothes.
- Exodus 21:32
If the ox gores a slave, male or female, its owner will pay the price -- thirty shekels -- to their master, and the ox will be stoned.
- Exodus 30:13
Everyone subject to the census will pay half a shekel, reckoning by the sanctuary shekel: twenty gerah to the shekel. This half-shekel will be set aside for Yahweh.
- Exodus 38:24
The amount of gold used for the work, for the entire work for the sanctuary (the gold consecrated for the purpose) was twenty-nine talents and seven hundred and thirty shekels, reckoned by the sanctuary shekel.