The LORD said to Moses, “When you take the census of the people of Israel, then each shall give a ransom for his life to the LORD when you number them, that there be no plague among them when you number them. Each one who is numbered in the census shall give this: half a shekel according to the shekel of the sanctuary (the shekel is twenty gerahs), half a shekel as an offering to the LORD. Everyone who is numbered in the census, from twenty years old and upward, shall give the LORD’S offering. The rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less, than the half shekel, when you give the LORD’S offering to make atonement for your lives. You shall take the atonement money from the people of Israel and shall give it for the service of the tent of meeting, that it may bring the people of Israel to remembrance before the LORD, so as to make atonement for your lives.”
Comment: Most of us won’t probably know what shekels and gerahs were or what they were worth. The shekel of the sanctuary was the unit to be used when censuses were taken. Presumably in daily business people were able to negotiate the worth of a weight of gold, but the sanctuary shekel was fixed. Ten gerahs or half a shekel was 6 grams of gold. This was portion of the income to run the theocracy, Israel, on earth. Why didn’t the rich have to pay more? Because in the sight of God every person is of equal value! People under 20 are not of less value but they (presumably) would not have been able to earn much and they didn’t have a vote! We know very well, however, that children and teenagers do affect our decisions! I think that God setting an age indicated that a degree of maturity is necessary to make final decisions. This is worth considering in relation to sex change therapy, and many other things! It was called atonement money, although money can never be the means of getting right with God. The value does however remind us that there is a cost to be part of the people of God. We can enter the Family of God by Faith in Jesus but then we are expected to live as His and that is sometimes very costly. Consider the people being martyred in many countries these days!
Prayer: God please help me to live out my promise when I say or sing ‘all to Jesus I surrender!’
As I read it! 