What Does Exodus 30:13 Mean?

(13) **Half a shekel.**—When shekels came to be coined, they were round pieces of silver, about the circumference of a shilling, but considerably thicker, and worth about 2s. 7 d. Of our money. Their average weight was about 220 grains troy. In Moses’s time coins were unknown, and a half-shekel was a small lump of silver, unstamped, weighing probably about 110 grains. The ransom of a soul was doubtless made thus light in order that the payment might not be felt practically as a burthen by any. **After the shekel of the sanctuary.**—Without a standard laid up somewhere, weights and measures will always fluctuate largely. Even with a standard, they will practically vary considerably. The “shekel of the sanctuary” probably designates a standard weight kept carefully by the priests with the vessels of the sanctuary. All offerings were to be estimated by this shekel (Leviticus 27:25). **A shekel is twenty gerahs.**—Rather, *the shekel, i.e.; *the shekel of the sanctuary is of this weight. A “gerah” was, literally, *a bean, *probably the bean of the carob or locust tree (C*eratonia siliqua*)*, *but became the name of a weight, just as our own “grain” did. It must have equalled about eleven grains troy.