Gerah

Occurrences in Scripture

The gerah appears five times in the Old Testament of the New Korean Revised Version. Each occurrence is a statement fixing the size of the shekel with the words "a shekel is twenty gerahs."

• Exodus 30:13: When a census is taken, every person twenty years old and above is to pay half a shekel as a ransom for his soul (money given as the price of a life). Exodus 30:15 adds, "The rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less."
• Leviticus 27:25: When a person, an animal, or a field that has been vowed to God is redeemed by payment instead, the price is set according to the shekel of the sanctuary.
• Numbers 3:47: Because the firstborn sons of Israel outnumber the Levites by 273, five shekels apiece are collected to redeem each of those in excess.
• Numbers 18:16: The firstborn of man is to be redeemed for five shekels of silver.
• Ezekiel 45:12: Among the commands to establish just balances and measures in restored Israel, the relationship between the shekel and the maneh (a unit of weight) is fixed.

Background

Before coinage came into wide use, payment in the ancient Near East was made by weighing out silver. The shekel and the gerah were therefore units of weight before they became names of money. "Gerah" is a transliteration of the Hebrew word gerah. According to a commonly cited explanation, the name derives from the weight of a single small seed, such as a grain or a bean, but this is not settled.

The Pentateuch repeatedly sets forth "the shekel of the sanctuary" as the standard and in each case fixes its size in gerahs. This is generally understood as an effort to establish an unambiguous standard for silver offered to the sanctuary, since the weight of the shekel varied by region and period. Conversions into modern units differ depending on the excavated weights consulted and on the researcher, so a gerah is usually given only as roughly slightly more than half a gram.

Significance in the Whole of Scripture

Most of the passages in which the gerah appears concern atonement or redemption: they set the ransom given in place of a life, the price for redeeming the firstborn, and the price for redeeming what has been vowed. By stressing exact weight, these regulations show that offerings to God are governed by a fair and clear standard. Ezekiel's command to keep just weights and measures belongs to the same line of thought.

The word "gerah" does not occur in the New Testament. Many interpreters, however, see the half shekel of Exodus 30 as continuing in the later temple tax, and the "two-drachma" temple tax of Matthew 17:24–27 is often cited as an example. 1 Peter 1:18–19 states that believers were "not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold," but "with the precious blood of Christ." This passage is sometimes read in comparison with the Old Testament regulations by which a life was redeemed with a weight of silver.

Interpretation and Points of Discussion

• Conversions of the gerah into modern grams vary from scholar to scholar. Precise figures given in sermons or study materials should be regarded as estimates.
• Many interpreters read "twenty shekels, five and twenty shekels, fifteen shekels" in Ezekiel 45:12 as totaling sixty shekels, which together make one maneh. Understanding of the verse, however, differs according to manuscripts and translations.
• Many sermons take the requirement in Exodus 30 that rich and poor pay the same amount to mean that every life is of equal value before God. This is an application grounded in the text. By contrast, interpretations that assign a separate symbolic meaning to the gerah itself go beyond what the text directly says.