(1) יהוה spoke to Moses, saying: (2) Speak to the Israelite people and say to them: When any party (lit. a man) explicitly vows to יהוה the equivalent for a human being, (3) the following scale shall apply: If it is a male from twenty to sixty years of age, the equivalent is fifty shekels of silver by the sanctuary weight; (4) if it is a female, the equivalent is thirty shekels. (5) If the age is from five years to twenty years, the equivalent is twenty shekels for a male and ten shekels for a female. (6) If the age is from one month to five years, the equivalent for a male is five shekels of silver, and the equivalent for a female is three shekels of silver. (7) If the age is sixty years or over, the equivalent is fifteen shekels in the case of a male and ten shekels for a female. (8) But if one cannot afford the equivalent, that person shall be presented before the priest, and the priest shall make an assessment; the priest shall make the assessment according to what the vower can afford.
בערכך נפשות. הטעם שידור נדר לאמר אם השם יעשה לי כך אפדה נפשי כדי ערכי או ערך בני או ערך בהמה...
A VOW OF PERSONS. Its meaning is, he will take a vow saying: If God will do the following for me then I will redeem my life in accordance with its value, or the value of my son’s life, or the value of the life of a beast...
(1) והיה ערכך THEN YOUR EQUIVALENT SHALL BE etc. — This word 'equivalent' used throughout this section has not the meaning of 'value', market-value, but whether one be of high value or of low value, according to the person's age is the equivalence fixed in this section.
(א) הַכֹּל מַעֲרִיכִין וְנֶעֱרָכִין, נוֹדְרִים וְנִדָּרִים, כֹּהֲנִים וּלְוִיִּם וְיִשְׂרְאֵלִים, נָשִׁים וַעֲבָדִים. טֻמְטוּם וְאַנְדְּרוֹגִינוֹס, נוֹדְרִים וְנִדָּרִים וּמַעֲרִיכִין, אֲבָל לֹא נֶעֱרָכִין, שֶׁאֵינוֹ נֶעֱרָךְ אֶלָּא זָכָר וַדַּאי וּנְקֵבָה וַדָּאִית. חֵרֵשׁ, שׁוֹטֶה וְקָטָן, נִדָּרִין וְנֶעֱרָכִין, אֲבָל לֹא נוֹדְרִין וְלֹא מַעֲרִיכִין, מִפְּנֵי שֶׁאֵין בָּהֶם דָּעַת. פָּחוּת מִבֶּן חֹדֶשׁ, נִדָּר אֲבָל לֹא נֶעֱרָךְ:
(1) Everyone may valuate and be valuated, everyone vows and may be vowed about - priests, Levites and Israelites, women, and Canaanite slaves...
The text is a difficult one for the modern reader. Why does the valuation use the categories of gender and of age, rather than of skills and abilities, of strength, health or experience? All the things that we value in marketing ourselves today seem less important to the Levitical writer. Gender and age are clearly important to bosses: – today’s campaigns to make job applications and CV’s appear both gender and age neutral show that people are persuaded by them, often to the detriment of both parties. And here is bible endorsing the world view that men’s work is intrinsically more valuable than women’s. The smell of patriarchy is strong; the invisibility of the value of women’s work is powerfully embedded in the assumptions of this scale.
It is all the more galling because this chapter deals, unlike earlier ones, with debts to God. So even if the scale is based on how much a person might fetch in the slave market, (a dubious but prevalent explanation of this piece), it seems ridiculous that God too would value a person for their physical attributes as a worker. Each of us is intrinsically of absolute value, each of us is made in the image of God – this is a fundamental understanding of the book of Genesis and a principle of Judaism through the ages.
It seems to me that the scale is not looking at skills or experience, spirituality or intelligence, abilities or competence because these are not what is valuable to the writer. It is looking instead at the value of roles that happen in public life over the value of roles that happen more privately. It is ignoring the enormous and invisible work that is generally gendered female – caring, cleaning, cooking, child-rearing, nursing, shopping, making a home, and noticing only what happens in the public domain, and especially the religious public domain. Women, whose bodies and whose sexuality was seen as mysterious and polluting of the religious domain were removed and relegated, their participation in religious or communal activities seen as unacceptable...
In the Image of God: A Feminist Commentary on the Torah by Judith Antonelli
And what is different with regard to a female, that when she ages past sixty years she stands at a valuation of ten shekels, one-third of her previous valuation of thirty shekels, and what is different with regard to a male, that when he ages past sixty, at which point he has a valuation of fifteen shekels, he does not stand at even one-third of his previous valuation of fifty shekels? Ḥizkiya said that people say: an elderly man in the home, is a burden in the home, an elderly woman in the home, is a treasure in the home.