Today’s reading is all about people and things that belong to God . . . and everything does belong to God. The Bible is clear about that when it says,

“The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world and all who live in it; for he founded it upon the seas and established it upon the waters.” Psalm 24:1-2

Everything we have belongs to God, but there are times when people are inspired to make a special gift back to him from what he has given them. They may promise something or someone very precious as part of their prayers.

Rash Promises

God knows that sometimes people make rash promises to him. In the heat of a moment, or under stress, people will offer God something of great value if he will help them. Sometimes a burst of gratitude makes them vow to give him an extraordinary offering.

God takes people’s vows very seriously. As Jesus said in Matthew 12:36

“But I tell you that everyone will have to give account on the Day of Judgment for every empty word they have spoken.”

If every careless word is heard and remembered by God, the Israelites solemn promises certainly were. Promises and vows made to God had to be kept. If a person changed his mind about giving God something he promised, he had to redeem it by paying for its value, plus twenty percent, at the tabernacle.

Redeeming People Promised to God

In 1 Samuel 1:1-28 a woman named Hannah was desperate to have children. She went with her husband to the tabernacle and as she wept and prayed for the blessing of a child, she promised God that if he gave her a son she would dedicate him to God. God answered her prayer and when her firstborn son Samuel was about three years old, Hannah brought him to the tabernacle and left him with the priests to serve God the rest of his life.

Samuel’s story was unusual. God said that all the firstborn sons of Israel belonged to him, but rarely did a boy end up serving at the tabernacle from such an early age.

If someone dedicated a family member to the Lord, and then changed his mind, the dedicated person had to be redeemed at the going rate for a slave. A man in his prime, between the ages of twenty and sixty, was valued at fifty shekels of silver, by the sanctuary shekel measure. A female in her prime was valued at thirty shekels of silver, and so on. The less work a person was capable of doing, the less their value in shekels.

Dedicating a person to God was complicated by the fact that only an ordained Levite could serve at the tabernacle. A person dedicated to God might serve the Levites by farming for them or assisting in other ways, but that took them out of the normal course of their life. The person who dedicated them might re-think that pretty quickly and redeem them with shekels instead.

G.J. Wenham says that the normal income for an Israelite in those days was about one shekel per month. Dedicating and then redeeming a person was not something that could be done lightly. If the person who made the vow was too poor to pay the redemption price, the priest could set the value according to what they could afford. This was a kindness from God.

The main thing was not to make a rash vow to God because he took the vow seriously. It had to be fulfilled by the person who made it.

Animals Dedicated to God

When a man vowed his prize bull (or any other prized animal) to God, that very animal had to be brought to the tabernacle. No substitutes were allowed. If the man showed up with a different animal, both the one he brought and the one he vowed belonged to God. If the man wanted to keep the animal he vowed, he had to pay the priest its value, plus twenty percent.

An animal that was not acceptable as a sacrifice could be dedicated, but in that case, it became the property of the priests. It also could be redeemed at its value plus twenty percent, if the donor changed his mind.

Firstborn animals could not be dedicated as part of a vow because they already belonged to God.

Houses and Lands

A house could be dedicated to the Lord, and it could be redeemed by paying the value the priest set on it, plus twenty percent. This would be a house in a town, not a house built on ancestral land.

Land was trickier because God had given the land to families in perpetuity. If land was vowed to the Lord, it had to be redeemed before the year of Jubilee because it was supposed to revert to the family at that time. If it was not redeemed before Jubilee it became permanently holy and belonged to God.

The redemption value of the land was based on how many crops it could produce before Jubilee, plus twenty percent. Sections of land, or fields, were valued in the same way.

Things Devoted to Destruction

There were some people and objects that God devoted to destruction and they could never be part of a vow of dedication, nor could they be redeemed. Exodus 22:20 gave the command from God regarding the people and things that were devoted to destruction:

“Whoever sacrifices to any god other than the Lord must be destroyed.”

Anyone or anything devoted to idolatry was banned from Israel. As they moved into Canaan they would have to carry out God’s command and completely destroy the people, animals and towns where idolatry had prevailed. Nothing in those towns was eligible to be set aside as holy.

Tithing

A tenth of all of Israel’s produce, crops and fruit, belonged to God. If someone didn’t want to bring their tithe to the tabernacle, he was responsible to pay its value, plus twenty percent, in shekels.

A tenth of every flock and herd also belonged to God. People had their animals pass under a rod and they pulled aside every tenth one to give to God. They were not allowed to substitute bad animals for good ones when they brought their tithe.

Misplaced Chapter?

The final chapter of Leviticus seems to be set in a strange place. Yesterday we read the end of the law  in chapter 26, and today there is this final chapter.

Chapter 27 Leviticus has to do with the relationship between God and the people who were devoted to him. Whenever they wanted to express their reverence in especially meaningful ways, they could make a vow or dedicate to God something precious to them. God welcomed their zeal, but he made sure they expressed it in ways appropriate to his holiness and majesty. The last thing God wanted was to see his people accidentally sin when they were trying to honor him.

Welcome to Numbers!

The book of Numbers begins, appropriately, with a census of the people of Israel. It was now the second month of the second year after they left Egypt and God was ready to lead them on to the Promised Land. First, he had them take note of who they were as families and tribes.

The census organized the nation into its component parts as tribes. In order to be counted, they had to gather together under their ancestral names and the people would be identified by their tribes from then on. The way they camped around the tabernacle, and the formation they followed as they moved from place to place, was all going to be organized by tribe.

Forming an Army

The census helped Moses and Joshua know how many fighting men they had in Israel. Men over the age of twenty were counted and named, one by one. They were essentially registering for Israel’s military draft.

The only men not counted in the census were the Levites. They were already enlisted by God in the service of the tabernacle. While the other tribes had a banner to camp under whenever they stopped in the desert, the Levites had the tabernacle.

God chose the Levites for himself back in Exodus 32:1-29, when they rallied to Moses and opposed everyone in Israel who had begun to practice idolatry.  God didn’t want people to worship anything less than himself. As we read we can check our own hearts and see if there is anything in them that is more important to us than the Lord.

And we can pay special attention to God’s hatred of idolatry as we continue through the Old Testament.