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Leviticus 27

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1 And the Lord said to Moses,

2 Say to the children of Israel, If a man makes a special oath, you will give your decision as to the value of the persons for the Lord.

3 And you will put the value of a male from twenty years to sixty years old at fifty shekels of silver, by the scale of the holy place.

4 And if it is a female, the value will be thirty shekels.

5 And if the person is from five to twenty years old, the value will be twenty shekels for a male, and ten for a female.

6 And if the person is from one month to five years old, then the value for a male will be five shekels of silver, and for a female three shekels.

7 And for sixty years old and over, for a male the value will be fifteen shekels, and for a female, ten.

8 But if he is poorer than the value which you have put on him, then let him be taken to the priest, and the priest will put a value on him, such as it is possible for him to give.

9 And if it is a beast of which men make offerings to the Lord, whatever any man gives of such to the Lord will be holy.

10 It may not be changed in any way, a good given for a bad, or a bad for a good; if one beast is changed for another, the two will be holy.

11 And if it is any unclean beast, of which offerings are not made to the Lord, then let him take the beast before the priest;

12 And let the priest put a value on it, if it is good or bad; whatever value the priest puts on it, so will it be.

13 But if he has a desire to get it back for himself, let him give a fifth more than your value.

14 And if a man has given his house as holy to the Lord, then the priest will put a value on it, if it is good or bad; as the priest gives decision so will the value be fixed.

15 And if the owner has a desire to get back his house, let him give a fifth more than your value, and it will be his.

16 And if a man gives to the Lord part of the field which is his property, then let your value be in relation to the seed which is planted in it; a measure of barley grain will be valued at fifty shekels of silver.

17 If he gives his field from the year of Jubilee, the value will be fixed by your decision.

18 But if he gives his field after the year of Jubilee, the amount of the money will be worked out by the priest in relation to the number of years till the coming year of Jubilee, and the necessary amount will be taken off your value.

19 And if the man who has given the field has a desire to get it back, let him give a fifth more than the price at which it was valued and it will be his.

20 But if he has no desire to get it back, or if he has given it for a price to another man, it may not be got back again.

21 But the field, when it becomes free at the year of Jubilee, will be holy to the Lord, as a field given under oath: it will be the property of the priest.

22 And if a man gives to the Lord a field which he has got for money from another, which is not part of his heritage;

23 Then the value fixed by you up to the year of Jubilee will be worked out for him by the priest, and in that day he will give the amount of your value as holy to the Lord.

24 In the year of Jubilee the field will go back to him from whom he got it, that is, to him whose heritage it was.

25 And let all your values be based on the shekel of the holy place, that is, twenty gerahs to the shekel.

26 But a man may not give by oath to the Lord the first-fruits of cattle which are offered to the Lord: if it is an ox or a sheep it is the Lord's.

27 And if it is an unclean beast, then the owner of it may give money to get it back, in agreement with the value fixed by you, by giving a fifth more; or if it is not taken back, let it be given for money in agreement with your valuing.

28 But nothing which a man has given completely to the Lord, out of all his property, of man or beast, or of the land which is his heritage, may be given away or got back in exchange for money; anything completely given is most holy to the Lord.

29 Any man given completely to the Lord may not be got back: he is certainly to be put to death.

30 And every tenth part of the land, of the seed planted, or of the fruit of trees, is holy to the Lord.

31 And if a man has a desire to get back any of the tenth part which he has given, let him give a fifth more.

32 And a tenth part of the herd and of the flock, whatever goes under the rod of the valuer, will be holy to the Lord.

33 He may not make search to see if it is good or bad, or make any changes in it; and if he makes exchange of it for another, the two will be holy; he will not get them back again.

34 These are the orders which the Lord gave to Moses for the children of Israel in Mount Sinai.

   

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Moses

  

At the inmost level, the story of Moses -- like all of the Bible -- is about the Lord and his spiritual development during his human life as Jesus. Moses's role represents establishing forms of worship and to make the people obedient. As such, his primary representation is "the Law of God," the rules God gave the people of Israel to follow in order to represent spiritual things. This can be interpreted narrowly as the Ten Commandments, more broadly as the books of Moses, or most broadly as the entire Bible. Fittingly, his spiritual meaning is complex and important, and evolves throughout the course of his life. To understand it, it helps to understand the meaning of the events in which he was involved. At a more basic level, Moses's story deals with the establishment of the third church to serve as a container of knowledge of the Lord. The first such church -- the Most Ancient Church, represented by Adam and centered on love of the Lord -- had fallen prey to human pride and was destroyed. The second -- the Ancient Church, represented by Noah and the generations that followed him -- was centered on love of the neighbor, wisdom from the Lord and knowledge of the correspondences between natural and spiritual things. It fell prey to the pride of intelligence, however -- represented by the Tower of Babel -- and at the time of Moses was in scattered pockets that were sliding into idolatry. On an external level, of course, Moses led the people of Israel out of Egypt through 40 years in the wilderness to the border of the homeland God had promised them. Along the way, he established and codified their religious system, and oversaw the creation of its most holy objects. Those rules and the forms of worship they created were given as containers for deeper ideas about the Lord, deeper truth, and at some points -- especially when he was first leading his people away from Egypt, a time before the rules had been written down -- Moses takes on the deeper representation of Divine Truth itself, truth from the Lord. At other times -- especially after Mount Sinai -- he has a less exalted meaning, representing the people of Israel themselves due to his position as their leader. Through Moses the Lord established a third church, one more external than its predecessors but one that could preserve knowledge of the Lord and could, through worship that represented spiritual things, make it possible for the Bible to be written and passed to future generations.