2. Should a man set aside a votive offering. This miscellany of laws seems, by modern lights, an odd way to conclude a book. Interpretive attempts have been made to rescue it as a thematically appropriate conclusion, but none is altogether persuasive. This final chapter is best regarded as an appendix to Leviticus focusing on a variety of laws pertaining to voluntary offerings and taxed obligations to the sanctuary. Perhaps these monetary issues, necessary for the maintenance of the sanctuary but not altogether agreeable for the audience of the book to contemplate, were deliberately tacked on at the very end.

in the value fixed. The Hebrew term, at least as it has been vocalized by the Masoretes, is beʿerkekha, which means literally “in your value/valuation.” It seems likely (though there are other philological solutions) that this is a colloquial term—“as you would evaluate”—that became frozen and lexicalized as an abstraction with the general sense of “assessed value.” The verb used in verse 8 and elsewhere for the priest’s assessment of monetary value is cognate with this noun and hence is translated here as “evaluate” in order to make that connection clear.

the value fixed for. What follows is a table of fixed values in weights of silver (the meaning of “shekel”), the valuation being strictly according to age and gender with no regard to the social or economic standing of the person. The system of valuation, as Baruch Levine plausibly contends, reflects the potential economic productivity of a person of the stipulated age bracket and gender. A male has greater potential productivity than a female, a mature person greater productivity than a child or than an aged person. The idea of setting the amount of a votive offering of silver as the equivalent of the value of a person has symbolic and psychological force, for it expresses the idea that the votary is offering to the sanctuary an equivalent of himself or herself.

8. if one should become too impoverished. The verb, which in different contexts has been translated “fall to ruin,” indicates a process of steep economic decline. What it logically means here is that the person in question made the vow to give the offering of his fixed value in silver but then fell on hard times, so that he now does not have the wherewithal to pay his pledge. The priest is therefore enjoined to assess the person’s economic state and impose whatever limited amount it seems reasonable for him to pay.

9. any of which may be given to the LORD. That is, any of the specified kinds of animals acceptable as sacrifices. Such an animal, once pledged by the votary, becomes “holy,” to be offered as a sacrifice with the greater part of its flesh reserved for the exclusive consumption of the priests.

10. whether good for bad or bad for good. The particular animal that the votary has pledged must be offered, and the substitution of, say a fatter animal for a scrawny one or the other way around, is not allowed.

11. any unclean animal. The animal in this case, which could not be used as a sacrifice, serves as a unit of value. Though Jacob Milgrom argues that unclean animals—for example, donkeys—could be used as beasts of burden in the sanctuary, the stipulation here of the priest’s function as an assessor of value suggests that what the law has in view is the equivalent in silver of the animal.

12. whether good or bad. This means, of course, whether high or low, but the valuation itself is set according to the health, age, size, and so forth (“good or bad”) of the animal.

13. if he in fact redeems it. The votary may change his mind and decide he wants to hang on to this particular animal. In that case, he is obliged to pay a 20 percent surcharge on top of its assessed value in silver.

16. according to its seed. That is, according to its capacity to be planted with a particular quantity of seed.

a homer. The ḥomer, derived from ḥamor, “donkey” (a load that a donkey can carry), is a large unit of dry measure, well above a hundred liters.

17. from the jubilee year, it shall stand according to its value. This accords with the preceding laws about the redemption of slaves and real property in relation to the jubilee cycle. Consecration at the time of the jubilee would produce the maximal value. Because the land is part of the person’s ancestral, tribal holding, it must revert to him at the next jubilee.

20. and had sold the field to another man. The Hebrew is a little cryptic. Milgrom, following Menahem Haran, plausibly argues that the person has first sold the field, which would ordinarily revert to him in the jubilee, and then consecrated it to the priests. The consecration following the sale (which was in effect no more than a lease) suggests that he is renouncing his right to have the property revert to him in the jubilee, as the next verse makes explicit.

22. a field he has purchased. This is a piece of property that is not part of his ancestral holding and hence need not revert to him in the jubilee.

25. the sanctuary shekel. As elsewhere, this phrase indicates a shekel that has a greater weight than the mercantile shekel.

26. But the firstborn of the animals . . . no man shall consecrate. Since the firstborn in any case belongs to the deity, its owner is in no position to consecrate it as though it were his voluntary offering.

28. anything proscribed. The Hebrew term is ḥerem, which in martial contexts means the “ban” of total destruction to which a conquered population and its possessions are subjected. In the present context, a more pacific kind of ḥerem is intended: whatever a person irrevocably divests himself of and sets aside to be dedicated to God. Thus “humans” (ʾadam) here must mean the one category of human beings that can become permanent property, non-Israelite slaves, and their fate in this instance is not destruction but transfer to the jurisdiction of the sanctuary. Thus three categories of property are listed: slaves, livestock, and land.

29. No human who has been proscribed. In this case, the reference is by no means limited to slaves, and the ḥerem referred to is the lethal kind. One clear-cut example would be a prisoner taken from a conquered town that was to be subjected to the ban of total destruction (like Agag the Amalekite king in 1 Samuel 15). The ban cannot be revoked, and hence the proscribed person is “doomed to die.” The appropriateness in this instance of the verb “ransomed,” instead of the reiterated “redeemed” is clear.

32. anything that passes under the staff. The staff in question is obviously the shepherd’s staff, and the phrase as a whole, which appears with variations elsewhere in the Bible, is a kenning for herded animals. Both medieval and modern commentators, putting this phrase together with the next verse, have understood the law to be that the shepherd actually counts the animals passing under his staff, marking every tenth one to be tithed to the sanctuary. As the next verse makes clear, the tenth animal, whether it is robust or meager, cannot be replaced by another creature, for better or for worse.

34. These are the commands that the LORD charged Moses. Most commentators see this statement of closure as an explicit tie-in with the formal conclusion (26:46) of the previous textual unit, “These are the statutes and the laws and the teachings that the LORD set out between Himself and the Israelites on Mount Sinai through the hand of Moses.” Since this chapter does not deal with covenantal material, the language of betweenness is omitted, and “commands” may have been introduced as a term that comprises the others. But as an editorial decision, this final verse equally points back to the whole Book of Leviticus and forward to the Book of Numbers. Leviticus begins not exactly on Mount Sinai but at the Tent of Meeting, after the Sinai epiphany and presumably still in spatial proximity to the mountain. The opening words of Numbers remind us of the link between God’s revelation on Sinai and His further commands to Moses from the Tent of Meeting, locating God’s speech to Moses “in the Wilderness of Sinai in the Tent of Meeting.”