Leviticus 27:14 - Meaning and Application

This is the law about real estate set apart for God by a special vow.

If a man, out of zeal for God’s honor, dedicated his house to the Lord, the priest was to value it, and the money from its sale was to be used for the sanctuary (Leviticus 27:14). Over time, the sanctuary was greatly enriched by such dedicated gifts (1 Kings 15:15). If the owner later wanted to buy it back, he could not get it cheaply as if from someone else. He had to add one-fifth to the price, because he should have thought carefully before making the vow (Leviticus 27:15). God made room for needy people by lowering the value for them (Leviticus 27:8), but for a person who was careless and changeable, and whose later thoughts turned back toward the world and personal gain, God required a higher price. Blessed be God, there is a way to make our houses holy to the Lord without selling or buying them. If we and our households serve the Lord, if religion rules in them, if we turn sin far from them, and if we have a church in our house, then “Holiness to the Lord” is written on it. It belongs to him, and he will dwell with us there.

If a man dedicated part of his land to the Lord for holy use, then a difference had to be made between land he inherited and land he bought. The case was handled differently in each one.

If the land was his ancestral property, called the field of his possession, which had belonged to his family since the first division of Canaan, he could not give away all of it, not even to the sanctuary. God would not allow a zeal so extreme that it ruined a man’s family. He could dedicate only part of it (Leviticus 27:16). In that case, the land was valued by the amount of barley seed it would take to sow it. Land needing one homer, or chomer, of barley, which held ten ephahs (Ezekiel 45:11), was valued at fifty shekels, a fair price, if it was dedicated right away from the year of jubilee (Leviticus 27:17). If it was dedicated some years later, the price was reduced accordingly (Leviticus 27:18). After the value was set, the donor could, if he wanted, buy it back for sixty shekels for each homer’s sowing, because the price included an added fifth part. The money then went to the sanctuary, and the land returned to the man who had dedicated it (Leviticus 27:19). But if he did not buy it back, and the priest sold it to someone else, then at the year of jubilee, beyond which no sale could continue, the land came to the priests and stayed theirs forever (Leviticus 27:20, 27:21). What is given to the Lord should not be given with the right to take it back. What is devoted to the Lord must remain his forever, by a lasting covenant.

If the land was his own purchase and not part of his family inheritance, then the land itself was not handed over, but only its value for holy use was given to the priests (Leviticus 27:22, 27:24). The idea was that people who, by God’s blessing, had become rich enough to buy land would feel bound to set apart some part of what they had bought, at least, for God’s service. And here they were not limited, because they could, if they wished, dedicate the whole thing. We should give as God prospers us (1 Corinthians 16:2). People who buy property are in a special way called to be generous. Yet because purchased land was already meant to return to the original family at the year of jubilee, God would not let that law be canceled by making the land a gift, or corban, as in Mark 7:11. So the priest was to calculate what the land was worth for the years left until the jubilee, because only for that time was it truly his. God hates theft offered as a sacrifice. We can never serve God well with what we have taken from another person. He was to pay that amount right away, and keep the land until the year of jubilee, when it would return free of all claims, even the claim that it had been dedicated to the one who sold it.

The value of the shekel used in these estimates is also given here (Leviticus 27:25). It was twenty gerahs, and each gerah was sixteen barley grains. This had been fixed before (Exodus 30:13), and after some changes it was fixed again in Ezekiel’s vision of the temple (Ezekiel 45:12), showing that the gospel would bring things back to their older, proper measure.