Leviticus 27:3

Summary

The verse sets the valuation for a male between twenty and sixty years of age at fifty shekels of silver, measured according to the standard of the sanctuary shekel. It establishes both the age bracket and the fixed monetary amount for this category of vow-valuation.

Key words

• ha.Yah ("it will be", H1961) — qal sequential perfect, repeated twice (positions 2 and 17); it continues the legal sequence begun in earlier verses, expressing a recurring rule rather than a one-time event.
• 'er.ke.kha ("your valuation of", H6187 + H9021) — construct noun with second-person masculine suffix, appearing twice; it names the specific act of assessment ("your valuation") tied to the addressee, not a generic "price."
• ben 'es.rim shanah ("a son of twenty years", H1121L + H6242 + H8141) — the idiom ben + number + shanah is the standard Hebrew way to express age, literally "a son of twenty years," marking the lower boundary of the bracket.
• sha.Nah ("year", H8141) — feminine singular noun used with cardinal numbers to mark the two boundary ages (twenty, sixty).
• she.kel ha.qo.desh ("shekel of the holy place", H8255 + H9009 + H6944G) — construct chain specifying which shekel standard applies: the one associated with the sanctuary, distinguishing it from any other local weight standard.

What the text says

The verse is built as two parallel clauses, each introduced by the sequential ve-hayah ("and it will be"), a construction typical of legal/casuistic Hebrew that links this stipulation to the surrounding series of valuations in the chapter. The first clause defines the subject category: ha.zzakhar ("the male", H2145) qualified by an age range expressed through the ben...shanah idiom twice — mibben 'esrim shanah ("from a son of twenty years") ve-'ad ben shishim shanah ("and until a son of sixty years"). This idiom does not use an abstract word for "age" but literally frames the person as "son of" a number of years, a fixed Biblical Hebrew pattern for stating age.

The second clause restates ve-hayah 'erkekha ("and your valuation will be") and specifies the amount: chamishim sheqel kesef ("fifty shekel of silver"), followed by the qualifying phrase be-sheqel ha-qodesh ("by the shekel of the holy place"), a construct chain anchoring the monetary unit to a particular standard rather than any silver weight in general use.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders sheqel as δίδραχμα ("didrachma"), a Greek coin-weight term, rather than transliterating "shekel," and uses τιμή ("price/value") for 'erek. The Vulgate turns the casuistic "and it will be" structure into a conditional clause ("si fuerit masculus..."), framing the verse as a conditional statement ("if he shall be a male...") rather than preserving the sequential "and it will be" of the Hebrew.