The Verses That Changed My Life - Leviticus 27

Why Leviticus 27 Changed My View of God’s Law

So, I said that I would be making some videos about some verses that, you know, really changed my outlook. Some verses that really had an impact on me over the years since I've become a Christian. And so, I'm going to do that.

I'm going to start that today. These are in no particular order. And one of the things I will say up front is that this is a moving target, right? Like, you know, when you ask somebody what their top 10, you know, favorite verses are, it really depends on the season of life and what, you know, what's going on, the context and things changes all the time.

So, but these are the things that come to mind, you know, sort of immediately when I think of the verses that have kind of changed my perspective on things. And one thing you'll notice, and I think you'll see this today, this is not going to be a standard, these are my top 10 favorite verses.

They're not really my favorite verses. They're not like my life verses or inspiring really. I mean, maybe some of them will be, but that's not really what I mean. I mean, these are the things that when I read them and I understood them, it really changed my outlook.

I think you'll see what I mean in a second. Also, I'll try to connect everything to social justice because that's what I do. All right. The first verse or section of verses that changed my perspective on things is Leviticus chapter 27, starting in verse one, and probably eight verses, right?

You'll read them. Leviticus chapter 27, starting in verse one, these are the words of God. It says, the Lord spoke to Moses saying, speak to the people of Israel and say to them, if anyone makes a special vow to the Lord involving the valuation of persons, then the valuation of a male from 20 years old up to 60 years old shall be 50 shekels of silver, according to the shekel of the sanctuary.

If the person is female, the valuation shall be 30 shekels. If the person is from five years old up to 20 years old, the valuation shall be for male 20 shekels and for a female 10 shekels. If the person is from a month old up to five years old, the valuation shall be for male five shekels of silver and for a female, the valuation shall be three shekels of silver.

And if the person is 60 years old or over, the valuation for male shall be 15 shekels and for a female 10 shekels. And if someone is too poor to pay the valuation, then he shall be made to stand before the priest and the priest shall value him and the priest shall value him according to what the vower can afford.

The Skeptics Annotated Bible and the Charge of Sexism

Okay. So that's the, that's the, that's the section of verses, Leviticus chapter 27. And the context of me reading this verse, I remember it very clearly. Now when I became a Christian, the first thing I did was I started to read the Bible and I read the whole Bible in a very short amount of time.

And so I read this, but I never really considered it because, you know, I mean, if you've had this experience like I have, like you, you start reading the Bible and Genesis is great and you know, you're, you're getting through it, you're zipping through it like a novel or something like that.

And then you get to Exodus and it's also good. And then you start to get into the law and you just, your mind starts to go to sleep. And this is, this is, this is how kind of it happened to me too. I was trying to stay, I mean, not stay awake, but I was trying to pay attention, but some of it is so detailed that it's hard to do that.

I mean, I'm just being honest. I'm not trying to be blasphemous or anything like that. It's just hard. These laws are very out of context with my everyday life. And so it's hard to do. So I had read this, but I never really considered it too much.

But when I considered it and this, this section of verses changed my life is when I heard some atheists make some arguments based on this section of verses. And now I don't remember where I heard this first.

It was probably, I mean, it was just a typical village atheist type, someone who thinks they're very smart, but they're really not that smart. And I used to, I used to fear arguing with people like this, by the way, this is, this is true.

I used to fear the arguments of Richard Dawkins, who, who, all those guys, like it was just really, I used to fear, I don't anymore, obviously. But anyway, from one of those types of village, atheist type, not a very thoughtful kind of atheist.

I'm going to read it from the Anna, the skeptics annotated Bible. Okay. This is what, this is the basic argument. This is what they say. This is their annotation about this for the section of verses. It says, God defines the value of human life in dollars and cents.

Of course, to God, females are worth considerably less than males between 50 and 60 less, but neither are worth very much. And it's referring to this section of verses where it says that these, this is the valuation of persons.

And every single time, no matter if it's an old person, a middle-aged person, a child, whatever the person is, the woman is valued about 50 to 60 less than the male. Okay. So I read that and I was like, yeah, that's interesting.

You know, it kind of certainly seems to, to, to be about that. And so I read this and I thought about it long and hard and I did a little bit of digging, you know, it's, it's helpful to look at commentaries about what this is all about, because again, we're, we're pretty divorced from this context, this idea of vowing to the Lord and things like that.

It's just something that we're not really familiar with. We don't do this, this too much anymore, but, but, but it struck me instantly. I mean, I wasn't a scholar, but it struck me instantly that this is about a special case, making a vow to the Lord.

And I didn't understand what that was. And so I knew that the interpretation of this was dependent on what that's all about. Okay. So the atheist thinks about this deeply about it and says, we'll see, God thinks women are worthless.

You know, like, I mean, idiotic, very, very, very, very surface level, very superficial reading. But I knew as soon as I read this, that whatever this means, it has to do with the vow. What is the vow?

And, and, you know, without getting too deep into it, and there's a little bit of debate about this, of course, just like there's a debate about everything, but, but what's going on here is not, obviously not what the skeptics annotated Bible thinks is going on here.

You know, you really have to work at misunderstanding this, or just be illiterate, or just have an agenda, which is what the skeptics annotated Bible does. So here's what's going on here. So if you make a vow to the Lord, you have to keep it, you don't even like, you just have to keep it.

That's how it was back then. If you don't keep the vow to the Lord, then you've got problems. You know, it's not, it's not like when, when, when people today say to God, well, I'll do this, you know, if you do this, and then, then they don't do it and nothing happens to them.

It's not like that. This was a serious matter. Your word was, was a serious thing. And so if you didn't do it, then you have a problem now. And this valuation here is the redemption price of that vow, the redemption price.

And so how did, what, what happens when you break your vow to the Lord? What happens if you would want to be released from the vow or whatever it is, how do we adjudicate that? What's the, what's the consequence there?

Because there is a consequence. This is biblical justice. And so the valuation is more for a male than for a woman. It's not about the value of the person. It's about how much they owe if they don't keep their vow, it's the redemption cost.

So the fact that women's have, women have a less, a lower redemption cost, the atheist, you know, idiot who doesn't understand anything says, well, see, that means a woman is worth less. No, that means the penalty is less for a woman.

Why do you think the penalty might be less for a woman? I mean, you might not like it, but in their culture back then, the male had a lot more earning potential than a, than a female. The male was capable of earning more than the female.

So are you really arguing that it would have been a good idea to have the redemption cost of the vow of the, the make the, the making of a special vow to the Lord, be the same for males and females in a culture where a female had less earning potential?

Would that not have actually been a punishment to the female? You see, here's the thing. This is why this, this verse impacted me. Once I realized what was going on here, I, I realized how superficial most people's understanding of the Bible is very superficial, very stupid surface level.

And if you don't look into it and you just kind of take the atheist word for it, or the person who's, who's presenting this ridiculous arguments word for it, you might come away thinking God's law is ridiculous.

God's law doesn't make any sense when it's the exact opposite. This person is saying that this law says something that is basically the opposite of what it says. It's not about valuing people. It's about being fair to each person based on what their earning potential was based on what their characteristics are.

If you notice the valuation of old people is less, does the Bible really hold old people in lower esteem than young people? No, but their earning potential is less. It's a reality. When you get older, you have less earning potential in general.

Valuation of a child is the argument really that the, that, that the Bible doesn't value children? No. But the, but the, but the, but the child can't make money on their own. So obviously they shouldn't have to pay the same.

You see, do you see what I'm saying? So this first changed my life because it made me realize that the, that the depth that a lot of people understand the Bible is like a millimeter. And so all you got to do is a little bit of digging and a lot of these problems that these so-called problems that atheists have and unbelievers have is they go away.

And so this is related to social justice because a lot of people are talking about justice right now, but they have no clue what it is. They can say the word, they can say love, they can say justice, they can say love your neighbor, but when it comes down to their, their, their, their theology of what these words actually mean, what this looks like in practice, it's very, very shallow.

Justice, Social Justice, and the Meaning of Biblical Law

So Leviticus 27, this is one of the verses that changed my life. I hope this was helpful. And I hope you enjoy the rest of this series as we continue 10 verses that changed my life.