Laws About Vows

¹The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ²“Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, If anyone omakes a special vow to the Lord involving the valuation of persons, ³then the valuation of a male from twenty years old up to sixty years old shall be fifty shekels1 of silver, according to the pshekel of the sanctuary. ⁴If the person is a female, the valuation shall be thirty shekels. ⁵If the person is from five years old up to twenty years old, the valuation shall be for a male twenty shekels, and for a female ten shekels. ⁶If the person is from a month old up to five years old, the valuation shall be for a male five shekels of silver, and for a female the valuation shall be three shekels of silver. ⁷And if the person is sixty years old or over, then the valuation for a male shall be fifteen shekels, and for a female ten shekels. ⁸And if someone is too poor to pay the valuation, then he shall be made to stand before the priest, and the priest shall value him; the priest shall value him according to what the vower can afford.

⁹“If the vow2 is an animal that may be offered as an offering to the Lord, all of it that he gives to the Lord is holy. ¹⁰qHe shall not exchange it or make a substitute for it, good for bad, or bad for good; and if he does in fact substitute one animal for another, then both it and the substitute shall be holy. ¹¹And if it is any unclean animal that may not be offered as an offering to the Lord, then he shall stand the animal before the priest, ¹²and the priest shall value it as either good or bad; as the priest values it, so it shall be. ¹³rBut if he wishes to redeem it, he shall add a sfifth to the valuation.

¹⁴“When a man dedicates his house as a holy gift to the Lord, the priest shall value it as either good or bad; as the priest values it, so it shall stand. ¹⁵tAnd if the donor wishes to redeem his house, he shall add a sfifth to the valuation price, and it shall be his.

¹⁶“If a man dedicates to the Lord part of the land that is his possession, then the valuation shall be in proportion to its seed. A homer3 of barley seed shall be valued at fifty shekels of silver. ¹⁷If he dedicates his field from the year of jubilee, the valuation shall stand, ¹⁸but if he dedicates his field after the jubilee, then the priest shall ucalculate the price according to the years that remain until the year of jubilee, and a deduction shall be made from the valuation. ¹⁹vAnd if he who dedicates the field wishes to redeem it, then he shall add a sfifth to its valuation price, and it shall remain his. ²⁰But if he does not wish to redeem the field, or if he has sold the field to another man, it shall not be redeemed anymore. ²¹But the field, wwhen it is released in the jubilee, shall be a holy gift to the Lord, like a field that has been xdevoted. The priest shall be in ypossession of it. ²²If he dedicates to the Lord a field that he has bought, zwhich is not a part of his possession, ²³athen the priest shall calculate the amount of the valuation for it up to the year of jubilee, and the man shall give the valuation on that day as a holy gift to the Lord. ²⁴bIn the year of jubilee the field shall return to him from whom it was bought, to whom the land belongs as a possession. ²⁵Every valuation shall be according to cthe shekel of the sanctuary: dtwenty gerahs4 shall make a shekel.

²⁶“But a efirstborn of animals, which as a firstborn belongs to the Lord, no man may dedicate; whether ox or sheep, it is the Lord's. ²⁷And if it is an unclean animal, then he shall buy it back at the valuation, fand add a fifth to it; or, if it is not redeemed, it shall be sold at the valuation.

²⁸“But gno devoted thing that a man devotes to the Lord, of anything that he has, whether man or beast, or of his inherited field, shall be sold or redeemed; every devoted thing is most holy to the Lord. ²⁹hNo one devoted, who is to be devoted for destruction5 from mankind, shall be ransomed; he shall surely be put to death.

³⁰i“Every tithe of the land, whether of the seed of the land or of the fruit of the trees, is the Lord's; it is holy to the Lord. ³¹If a man wishes to redeem some of his tithe, he shall add a fifth to it. ³²And every tithe of herds and flocks, every tenth animal of all that jpass under the herdsman's staff, shall be holy to the Lord. ³³One shall not differentiate between good or bad, kneither shall he make a substitute for it; and if he does substitute for it, then both it and the substitute shall be holy; it shall not be redeemed.”

³⁴lThese are the commandments that the Lord commanded Moses for the people of Israel mon Mount Sinai.