Leviticus 27:6

Summary

Leviticus 27:6 establishes the valuation in silver for a vow-offering related to a person aged between one month and five years, within the context of the vows discussed in this chapter. The text sets separate amounts for a male and for a female of this age range.

Key words

• ben- ("a son of", H1121L) — construct form used idiomatically with a time unit to express age ("a son of a month" = one month old); it appears twice (positions 4 and 8), framing the age bracket.
• cho.desh ("a month", H2320G) — masculine singular noun marking the lower boundary of the age range together with ben-.
• 'er.ke.kha ("your valuation", H6187 + H9021) — construct noun 'erek ("valuation of") plus the second-person masculine singular suffix "your," repeated for the male (line 13-14) and the female (line 23-24), structuring the verse into two parallel valuation clauses.
• zakhar ("male", H2145) — masculine singular adjective with the definite article ha- (H9009), naming the first category to be valued.
• neqevah ("female", H5347) — feminine singular adjective, parallel to zakhar, introduced by the preposition-article la- ("for the", H9005).

What the text says

The verse opens with the conditional particle 'im ("if", H0518A), continuing a series of age-based conditions begun earlier in the chapter. The age bracket is expressed through the double construct phrase ben-chodesh... ben-chamesh shanim — literally "a son of a month... to a son of five years" — a Hebrew idiom where "son/daughter of [a time unit]" denotes age, rather than a direct statement of years.

The sequential verb hayah ("it will be", H1961), marked as a sequential perfect, continues the legal sequence from the prior verses, introducing the outcome: "your valuation of the male [shall be] five shekels of silver." The clause for the female lacks a repeated verb hayah; the noun 'er.ke.kha ("your valuation") is repeated instead, with the shekel amount changed from chamishah ("five", H2568) to sheloshet ("three", H7969) in construct form. This asymmetry — full verbal clause for the male, elliptical noun-based clause for the female — is a feature of the Hebrew syntax not necessarily preserved in translation, where both clauses may appear with parallel verbs.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the shekel unit for the male as ἀργυρίου ("of silver," genitive, unit unspecified beyond "five [pieces?] of silver") and for the female specifically as τρία δίδραχμα ("three didrachms"), introducing a specific Greek coin term where the Hebrew simply repeats sheqalim kasef ("shekels of silver") for both. The Vulgate uses sicli only for the male ("quinque sicli") and omits repeating the noun for the female ("tres"), relying on ellipsis, matching the Hebrew's own asymmetry but through a different grammatical mechanism (noun omission rather than restructured clause).