Shekel

Occurrences in the Bible

The shekel was the basic unit most often used in the Old Testament for weighing silver, gold, bronze, and similar materials. The principal passages are as follows.

• Genesis 23:16: Abraham, buying a field and a cave from Ephron, weighs out "four hundred shekels of silver, current money with the merchant."
• Exodus 30:13–15: When a census is taken, each person who is numbered pays half a shekel "after the shekel of the sanctuary" as a ransom for his soul (money given as the price of a life). The rich are not to give more, and the poor are not to give less.
• 1 Samuel 17:5–7: Goliath's coat of mail weighs five thousand shekels of brass, and his spearhead six hundred shekels of iron.
• 2 Samuel 24:24: David buys a threshing floor and oxen for fifty shekels of silver.
• Jeremiah 32:9: Jeremiah buys a field in Anathoth for seventeen shekels of silver.
• Matthew 17:24–27: The collectors of the temple tax question Peter. Jesus then has him take a coin (rendered "one shekel" in Korean translations) from the mouth of a fish and pay it for the two of them.

Background

The word sheqel derives from a Hebrew verb meaning "to weigh." Before coinage came into wide use, payment was made by weighing pieces of silver on a balance. For this reason the Bible describes payment by saying that silver was "weighed" out.

Exodus 30:13 and Ezekiel 45:12 set one shekel at twenty gerahs. On the basis of the figures in Exodus 38:25–26, one talent equals 3,000 shekels. The Bible mentions several standards, such as "the shekel of the sanctuary" and "the king's weight" (2 Samuel 14:26). Many scholars place the actual weight at roughly 11 grams, though it varied by period and region.

The shekel later also became the name of a silver coin. The currency of the modern State of Israel is likewise called the shekel.

Significance in the Bible as a Whole

The half-shekel ransom was an institution that reckoned every person at the same value. It continued in the temple tax of the New Testament era. The New Korean Revised Version renders the Greek units in Matthew 17 as "half shekel" and "one shekel," allowing readers to connect the passage with the Old Testament.

The sum of thirty pieces of silver appears in Exodus 21:32 as the price of a servant gored by an ox. In Zechariah 11:12–13 it appears as the wages of a shepherd. Matthew 26:15 and 27:3–10 interpret the thirty pieces of silver received by Judas Iscariot in light of this prophecy. Matthew does not name the unit, but it is commonly understood to refer to silver shekels.

The word "Tekel" in Daniel 5:25–27 is an Aramaic term from the same root as shekel. It is interpreted as the verdict on King Belshazzar: "Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting."

Interpretation and Debated Points

• Some interpreters connect the half-shekel ransom with Christ's atonement, comparing it with 1 Peter 1:18–19, which says that believers were redeemed not with silver or gold but with the blood of Christ. This is a typological reading (one in which an earlier event is seen as foreshadowing a later one) and is not what the Exodus text itself directly states.
• Matthew 27:9 introduces the account of the thirty pieces of silver as the words of Jeremiah, yet its wording is closer to Zechariah 11. Several explanations have been offered: that Matthew cites the passage together with Jeremiah's account of buying a field, that he attaches the name of a representative prophet, and others.
• 2 Samuel 24:24 gives the price as fifty shekels of silver, whereas 1 Chronicles 21:25 gives six hundred shekels of gold. A common explanation is that the former was the price of the threshing floor and oxen, while the latter was the price of the entire site.
• Sermons and other settings sometimes convert the shekel into Korean won, but there is no fixed value, because both the standard weight and the price of silver varied from era to era.

In the Korean Church

Sermons frequently address the half-shekel temple tax, the shekel taken from the fish's mouth, and the thirty pieces of silver received by Judas Iscariot. Some translations render the unit by its meaning, for example as "temple tax."