Peter Leithart recently wrote a fascinating short piece about the Half Shekel Temple Tax as an atonement.
Leithart argues three main points. First that the Sanctuary Shekel was heavier, i.e., more valuable than the everyday shekel. Second, he offers some analysis about the order of magnitude of the purchasing power of shekels including those from the Temple tax. Third, he argues that the half Shekel tax was an atonement, a “covering.” Fourth, he argues that since this tax is associated in Scripture with a census, and accompanies a mustering of troops, this atonement is in anticipation of holy war.
I plan to build out from there, expanding upon Leithart’s essay.
Before I get into the details, I’m going to lay out my own tentative conclusions because, well, there’s some math coming up and many of you will fall by the wayside before I get to my conclusions.
First, I will present some proposed explanations for some of the spending details that Leithart talks about. For example, I think that the discrepancy between expected tax revenues and actual tax revenues, and Solomon’s extravagant spending, both paint an unflattering portrait of Israel’s faithfulness to the covenant. I suggest that the people short-changed Yahweh in the building of His house, and that Solomon may have both overtaxed the people and engaged in warlike activity unbecoming a king named “Peace.”
Second, the Sanctuary Shekel may not have been heavier than the everyday shekel during the Mosaic and Kingly periods, but sometime during the intertestamental period, the sanctuary shekel was revalued in such a way as to make it much “heavier,” which amounted to making the burden of paying the Temple tax heavier on the people. The “glorious” shekel of Herod’s era added to his glory, not to God’s.
Third, once we understand that the valuation of the Sanctuary Shekel had been changed, to the benefit of the Temple elite and to the disadvantage of the people, various other New Testament passages take on added meaning. For example; the conflict with the moneychangers. Especially interesting is the discussion between Jesus and Peter about the Temple and the incident with the coin in the mouth of the fish. We will see that not only did Jesus pay for his own “cover” and for a covering for Peter, but (once we realize that there was a double taxation implicit in the exchange rate) we see that Jesus was paying four-fold atonement, when He need have paid none at all for Himself. This is suggestive of the idea that this incident was a foreshadowing of Jesus ransoming/covering the four corners of the earth, the whole world.
Fourth, if Leithart is right that the tax was a precursor to war, then Jesus’ willingness to pay it may well suggest that He himself, was about to launch a war, a holy war for the entire world.
First, let’s look at the Old Testament information about the Shekel valuation and expenditure.
Leithart describes in detail the extravagant purchases made by Solomon in 2 Chr. 1:14-17:
14 And Solomon amassed chariots and horsemen. He had 1,400 chariots, and 12,000 horsemen, and he stationed them in the chariot cities and with the king at Jerusalem.
15 And the king made silver and gold as plentiful in Jerusalem as stones, and he made cedars as plentiful as sycamores in the lowland.
16 And Solomon’s horses were imported from Egypt and from Kue; the king’s traders procured them from Kue for a price.
17 And they imported chariots from Egypt for 600 shekels of silver apiece, and horses for 150 apiece, and by the same means they exported them to all the kings of the Hittites and the kings of Aram. (2 Chr. 1:14-17 NAS)
Of course, the horses and chariots were not purchased out of Temple tax revenues. It certainly would not seem an appropriate use for that tax. In addition, the numbers are of such vastly greater orders of magnitude. The purchase of 1,400 chariots at 600 shekels each equals 840,000 shekels. Plus 12,000 horses at 150 shekels each comes out to 1,800,000 shekels. Together, that puts Solomon’s horse and chariot splurge at 2,690,000 shekels. That’s about 90 times the amount of the temple tax (even if there were 100% compliance with the Torah, which as we’ll see, is unlikely). So not only was Israel probably short-changing the Temple, but it was also splurging on imperial pomp.
What’s probably going on is that Solomon may well have been exacting excessively high levels of taxes. Of course, it could be that he bought on credit, but that doesn’t match the general picture of the prosperity of his kingdom. Or it could be that he bought and then resold some of these horses and chariots, which 2 Chr. 1:17 seems to imply. In this case, at least some of these purchases were inventory, not military expenditure. It’s not hard to imagine, given the geographical configuration, that Solomon acted as an arms merchant, buying from Egypt to the Southwest and selling to Aram in the North. I think the most likely is that Solomon overtaxed (helping to lead to the later spit in the kingdom) and resold some of these weapons of war (which the text pretty explicitly said). Neither of these things are particularly good signs.
The magnitude of this purchase exceeded the revenues which would come from a half shekel tax imposed on a census of 600,000 men. Such a census would yield 300,000 shekels. Leithart calculates from Exodus 38:25, that only 260,000 Shekels were forthcoming.
25 And the silver of those of the congregation who were numbered was 100 talents and 1,775 shekels, according to the shekel of the sanctuary;
26 a beka a head (that is, half a shekel according to the shekel of the sanctuary), for each one who passed over to those who were numbered, from twenty years old and upward, for 603,550 men. (Exod. 38:25-26 NAS)
If the people paid 300,000 everyday shekels and the revenue to the temple was only 260,000 Shekels “according to the shekel of the sanctuary,” then that implies a loss of 15% in the from the expected revenues with perfect compliance.
It’s possible that the discrepancy is due to a heaver sanctuary shekel, but unlikely, because the tax requirement and the description of the revenues were given in the units of sanctuary shekel:
“This is what everyone who is numbered shall give: half a shekel according to the shekel of the sanctuary (the shekel is twenty gerahs), half a shekel as a contribution to the LORD (Exod. 30:13 NASB).
So if 600,000 people follow the command and give half a temple shekel each, that comes to 300,000 temple shekels. If it turns out that only 260,000 temple shekels were received, then it appears that the people underpaid their taxes. There may be other explanations, but my inner economist is not inclined to rule out the tendency for people to engage in tax evasion, particularly in a tribal decentralized era without modern electronic record-keeping, and my inner Bible scholar is not inclined to rule out the possibility that the people of Israel did not render to God his due.
So, Israel apparently underfunded the house of Yahweh and overfunded its military industrial complex.
Was the Sanctuary Shekel heavier than the secular one? We don’t know for certain. The idea certainly has a theological appropriateness, i.e., glory and heaviness are very closely related ideas in Scripture. So a glorious temple might have a heavier currency.
The heavier shekel idea is somewhat unlikely, though, because the LXX uses the same Greek words to translate the word Hebrew word for Shekel in both secular and templar contexts: compare Genesis 23:16; Exodus 30:13 in which both are translated as didrachma. In other cases, shekel is translated as siclos, but again the word is used in both Templar contexts, and secular ones. But the LXX pattern does not seem to indicate different valuations between secular and templar contexts.
So why would the law even reference a “sanctuary shekel”? Perhaps God does that to specify the standards of just weights and measures. The temptation to debase currency is a strong one as is the temptation to short-change God, so the Torah defines a specific, fixed weight. Such standard-setting seems an appropriate role for the central institution of the Israelite theocracy, a moral as well as financial bureau of weights (glory) and measures (justice).
Whether the sanctuary shekel was indeed heavier than the everyday shekel during the Old Testament period (which I doubt), there is a very strong argument that the temple shekel was revalued so as to make it heavier during the New Testament period. In fact, it is clear that the shekel was revalued from the Old Testament period to the New Testament period in a way that acted to the disadvantage of the people and to the advantage of the Temple elite, which we’ll look at next.
Jerry is the author most recently of The Maker Versus the Takers: What Jesus Really Said About Social Justice and Economics (https://www.amazon.com/Maker-Versus-Takers-Justice-Economics/dp/1642933708). He is Editor of Town Hall Finance, serves on the Editorial Board of Salem Communications, is Resident Economist with Kingdom Advisors and President of Bowyer Research. He holds a Sacred Theology Licentiate from the Collegium Augustinianum and a Bachelor’s degree from Robert Morris University.