Leviticus 27:7

Summary

Leviticus 27:7 sets the monetary valuation for a person aged sixty years or older who is the object of a vow: fifteen shekels if male, ten shekels if female. This continues the sliding scale of valuations by age and sex found throughout Leviticus 27.

Key words

• ben ("a son of", H1121L) — construct noun used idiomatically with a number of years to express age ("a son of sixty years" = "sixty years old"), a common Hebrew age-formula.
• ma'lah ("up", H4605) with the directional he (H9011) — indicates "and upward," marking sixty as the lower threshold of an open-ended age category.
• erekh-kha ("your valuation", H6187 + H9021) — construct noun with 2nd-person suffix, the technical term for the fixed monetary assessment addressed to "you" (the one making the vow or the priest applying the law).
• zachar ("male", H2145) and nekevah ("female", H5347) — adjectives marking the two valuation categories, each governing a different shekel amount.
• shekel (H8255) — appears first in singular (shakel) after "fifteen," then in plural (shekalim) after "ten," reflecting Hebrew number-noun agreement patterns rather than any difference in the unit itself.

What the text says

The verse opens with a conditional chain: ve-'im ("and if") introduces the age threshold "from a son of sixty years and upward" (mi-ben-shishim shanah va-ma'lah), then a second 'im ("if") introduces the sex distinction, "if male." The sequential perfect verb ve-hayah ("and it will be") carries forward the legal instruction begun earlier in the chapter, functioning here to state the resulting valuation once the age and sex conditions are met — a typical Hebrew casuistic (case-law) structure of protasis (condition) plus apodosis (ruling).

The valuation itself is expressed through the construct phrase erekh-kha ("your valuation"), the same term used throughout the chapter, followed by the numeral and shekel. For the female case, the sentence drops the verb hayah and simply attaches the amount to ve-la-nekevah ("and for the female"), assuming the verb already stated for the male clause — a common ellipsis in Hebrew parallel clauses where repeated verbs are not restated.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the Hebrew age-construction mi-ben-shishim shanah ("from a son of sixty years") with the single compound adjective ἑξηκονταετών ("sixty-year-old"), collapsing the Hebrew's "son of" idiom into ordinary Greek age-vocabulary. The LXX also translates shekel as δίδραχμα ("didrachma"), a Greek monetary unit, rather than transliterating or otherwise marking the Hebrew coin term. The Vulgate similarly uses "siclos" for shekalim, keeping the Hebrew loanword, but expresses "sixty years and older" with the single term "Sexagenarius et ultra," without reproducing the Hebrew's construct "son of" phrasing.