Commentaria in Leviticum
Chapter the Twenty-seventh. Synopsis of the Chapter
Laws are ordained about the vows of men, animals, houses, fields, the anathema; again about tithes, ver. 30. These laws, here intricate, we can distinguish and comprehend clearly in few words and in brief as follows:
I, ver. 2. A man who has devoted himself to God, let him redeem himself by the price which is here taxed by God according to age and sex.
II, ver. 9. An animal fit for immolation, offered to God by vow, let it be actually given, not changed into another, nor redeemed.
III, ver. 11. An animal which cannot be immolated, if it be vowed to God, let it be sold at the price which the priest shall fix; and if the vower wish to give it, let him add besides a fifth part of the price.
IV, ver. 14. A house vowed to God, let it be sold at a price taxed by the priest; and if the vower wish to redeem it, let him add to the taxed price a fifth part of the price.
V, ver. 16. An heir vowing an hereditary field can redeem it by paying fifty shekels in proportion to the years that remain up to the jubilee: but if he do not redeem it, and the field be sold to another, he shall never, not even in the jubilee, be able to recover it; but the field shall pass absolutely and for ever into the right of God and the priests.
VI, ver. 22. If the vower of a field be not the heir, but the buyer of the field, he shall redeem it at a price which the priest shall tax according to the number of years up to the jubilee; for in the jubilee the field must, as usual, return to the first heir.
VII, ver. 25. Every price is to be weighed by the weight, or shekel, of the Sanctuary.
VIII, ver. 26. A firstborn fit for immolation, since it is wholly God’s, cannot be vowed.
IX, ver. 27. An unclean firstborn is to be redeemed.
X, ver. 28. What by the vow of cherem, that is, of the anathema, is consecrated to God shall not be redeemed, but shall die either naturally or civilly.
XI, ver. 30. The tithe of all fruits and crops shall be offered to God.
XII, ver. 32. The tithe of animals, namely of sheep, oxen and goats, shall be offered to God.
1. And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: 2. Speak to the children of Israel, and thou shalt say to them: When a man shall make a vow, and shall promise to God his soul, he shall give the price according to the estimation. 3. If it be a male from twenty years old unto sixty years old, he shall give fifty sicles of silver, after the weight of the sanctuary: 4. If a woman, thirty. 5. But from the fifth year until the twentieth, a male shall give twenty sicles: a female, ten. 6. From a month old unto five years, for a male shall be given five sicles: for a female, three. 7. A man that is sixty years old and upward, shall give fifteen sicles: a woman, ten. 8. If he be poor, and not able to pay the estimation, he shall stand before the priest: and as much as the priest shall estimate, and see him able to pay, so much shall he give. 9. But a beast that may be sacrificed to the Lord, if any man vow, shall be holy, 10. And cannot be changed, that is to say, neither a better for a worse, nor a worse for a better: and if he change it, both that which was changed, and that for which it was changed, shall be consecrated to the Lord. 11. An unclean beast, that cannot be sacrificed to the Lord, if any man vow, shall be presented before the priest: 12. And he shall judge whether it be good or bad, and shall set the price: 13. Which if he that offereth will give, he shall add above the estimation the fifth part. 14. If a man vow his house, and sanctify it to the Lord, the priest shall consider it whether it be good or bad, and it shall be sold according to the price that shall be set by him: 15. But if he that vowed will redeem it, he shall give the fifth part of the estimation over and above, and shall have the house. 16. If a man consecrate and vow to the Lord a field of his possession, the price shall be rated according to the measure of the seed: if the ground be sown with thirty bushels of barley, it shall be sold for fifty sicles of silver. 17. If he vow the field immediately from the beginning of the jubilee, as much as it may be worth at the estimation, so much shall it be sold. 18. But if a long time after, the priest shall reckon the money according to the number of the years that remain until the jubilee, and the price shall be abated. 19. And if he that vowed the field will redeem it, he shall add the fifth part of the money estimated, and shall possess it. 20. But if he will not redeem it, but it be sold to any other man, he that vowed it may not redeem it any more: 21. For when the day of the jubilee shall come, it shall be sanctified to the Lord, and the possession consecrated shall belong to the right of the priests. 22. If it be a field that was bought, and not of the paternal possession, and be sanctified to the Lord, 23. The priest shall reckon the price according to the number of the years until the jubilee: and he that vowed it shall give it to the Lord; 24. But in the jubilee it shall return to the former owner who had sold it, and had it in the lot of his possession. 25. Every estimation shall be weighed by the sicle of the sanctuary. A sicle hath twenty obols. 26. The firstlings which belong to the Lord, no man may sanctify and vow: whether it be bullock or sheep, they are the Lord’s. 27. And if it be an unclean beast, he that offereth it shall redeem it according to thy estimation, and shall add the fifth part of the price: if he will not redeem it, it shall be sold to another for as much as thou didst estimate it. 28. Nothing that is devoted to the Lord, whether man or beast or field, shall be sold, neither may it be redeemed. Whatsoever is once consecrated shall be holy of holies to the Lord. 29. And every consecration that is offered by man, shall not be redeemed, but shall be put to death. 30. All tithes of the land, whether of corn or of the fruits of trees, are the Lord’s, and are sanctified to him. 31. And if any man will redeem his tithes, he shall add the fifth part of them. 32. Of all the tithes of oxen, and sheep, and goats, that pass under the shepherd’s rod, every tenth that cometh shall be sanctified to the Lord. 33. It shall not be chosen neither good nor bad, neither shall it be changed for another. If any man change it, both that which was changed, and that for which it was changed, shall be sanctified to the Lord, and shall not be redeemed. 34. These are the precepts which the Lord commanded Moses for the children of Israel in mount Sinai.
2. A MAN WHO SHALL MAKE A VOW, AND PROMISE TO GOD HIS SOUL, HE SHALL GIVE THE PRICE ACCORDING TO THE ESTIMATION.—For “who shall make a vow,” the Hebrew is iphli neder, that is, who shall separate, or who shall make a wonderful vow: for, as Hesychius says, it is wonderful, and very near to blessedness, to offer oneself wholly to God, as his soul; or, as the Septuagint render, the honour or price (for time signifies both price and honour) of his soul, which he has received from God, he shall dedicate to God.
Plutarch tells in the Laconics of a Lacedaemonian who, having bound himself by a vow to cast himself headlong from the rock of Leucas, climbed the mountain, and, seeing the height, turned away. When this was cast in his teeth as a reproach, he said: “I did not think that for that vow I should need a greater vow.” For he who conceives a hard deed in mind ought first to ask of the gods a mind equal to the deed. So far Plutarch. Such is it here to devote one’s soul to God. For it is more to devote one’s soul to God than to offer it; for to this is added the vow, which is the most noble and chief act of religion.
AND PROMISE HIS SOUL,—as if to say: Who shall vow to bind himself to divine worship in the tabernacle, namely to carry water or wood to the sanctuary for the sacrifices, to sweep the court, to take care of the repairs of the temple, to serve the Levites, etc.; for no one could perform the proper duties of priests or Levites, and therefore not vow them, unless he were of the race of Levi. So Abulensis, Cajetan and others. Only Levites and priests, therefore, could vow that they would always minister in their sacred offices to the Lord, and were then bound to perform it from the vow, as is plain in Samuel, who was a Levite, whom his mother vowed to the Lord, 1 Kings 1:11; but to the other offices of the laity in the tabernacle, spoken of a little before, anyone of any tribe could offer and devote himself; but God here commands that vow to be redeemed, and that first, because the Gabaonites were to be assigned to those lower ministries of the tabernacle, Josue 9:24: whence God would not have his Hebrews assigned to those ministries of servants; secondly, because these vows would have been a burden to the sanctuary, which would have had to feed all these vowers. On the contrary God wished to provide the necessaries of life for his Levites and ministers, whose number was great: he commanded therefore that the vows be here commuted, at the price which he himself here fixes, as he commanded also the firstborn due to him to be redeemed at a price, and willed that price, as also the price of these vows, to fall to the right of the priests, as is plain ver. 21; and Num. 18:14. It is otherwise in the vows of Religion in the new law, by which a man dedicates himself to the noblest ministries, which exceed every price, and therefore can be redeemed by no price: which vows were not in the old law; yet if they had been, they would have bound the Jews, as other vows bound by which they vowed something else determinately, as is plain in the Nazarites: for these were bound to perform determinately what they had vowed. So Abulensis, Quest. 8.