What Does Leviticus 27:16 Mean?
And if a man sets apart to the LORD some part of a field of his holding, then your arranged worth is according to its seed; a heap of barley seed is set at fifty shekels of silver.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And if a man shall sanctify unto the LORD some part of a field of his possession, then thy estimation shall be according to the seed thereof: an homer of barley seed shall be valued at fifty shekels of silver.THE KEY
The field’s worth is read in the life its soil can carry: its seed becomes the measure of what is set apart.
THE MEANING
The verse gives a field dedicated to the LORD a concrete valuation, measured by the barley seed it can take. What is set apart remains materially valuable, and its capacity to bring forth is part of that value.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the idea that dedicating something makes its practical worth disappear: this field is still measured by what it can produce.
THE ROOT
זֶרַע
zeraʿ
GROWS FROM
זרע
To sow or scatter seed.
The same root names seed and the act of sowing, and it also extends to offspring. The field is measured through seed because the measure reaches toward what the land can bring forth, not just the ground it occupies.
ALSO GROWS
zaraʿ: to sow
זָרַע
The field’s valuation is tied to the seed that can be sown in it.
zeraʿ: seed; offspring
זֶרַע
The seed carries the sense of future generation, so the field’s measure points toward its capacity to produce.
יַקְדִּישׁ
yaqdish
GROWS FROM
קדש
To set apart as sacred or belonging to God.
“sets apart” in this verse is yaqdish. The root places the field in a distinct relation to the LORD; it does not make the field cease to be land with a measurable yield. The verse holds dedication and material valuation together.
ALSO GROWS
qodesh: set-apartness; sacredness
קֹדֶשׁ
It names the distinct status given to what is dedicated.
miqdash: sanctuary; set-apart place
מִקְדָּשׁ
Like the field here, a sanctuary is marked out for God while remaining a concrete place.
THE PATTERN
The seed a thing carries points to the life it can bring forth, and that capacity is counted.
All the days of the earth, sowing and reaping, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not stop.And other seed fell into the good soil, and it gave fruit, climbing and growing, and bore some thirtyfold, some sixtyfold, and some a hundredfold.Now the one who supplies seed to the sower supplies bread for eating, and fills out your sown seed, and makes grow the fruits of your alignment.THE THREAD
And God said, "Let the earth sprout green growth, the seed-bearing plant, and the fruit tree making fruit after its kind, whose seed is in it, upon the earth." And it was so.The word for seed, זֶרַע (zeraʿ), shares the same root זרע as the seed in Leviticus. Genesis shows seed carrying the means of further life within itself, opening the field’s valuation as a measure of what its soil can bring forth.
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