Essential Leviticus 27 Summary and Study Guide: Vows, the Tithe, and the Last Chapter of Leviticus

Why does a book about holiness end with a price list? Leviticus 27 sets a figure on people and property promised to God, and this Leviticus 27 summary and study guide explains what those figures were for and why the book stops here.

Setting the Stage

God brought Israel out of Egypt and met them at Mount Sinai, where He bound Himself to them in a covenant, an agreement with terms on both sides. Israel agreed to it out loud: “All that the LORD hath said will we do, and be obedient” (Exodus 24:7). They promised to do everything God had told them.

Everything in Leviticus follows from that agreement: a tent to build so God could live among them, priests, offerings, feasts, and rules for what was clean. Chapter 26 closed the terms by setting out what obedience and rebellion would each bring, and signed them (Leviticus 26:46).

Then God speaks once more. He has spent a book telling Israel what He will do. Chapter 27 is about what Israel says back.

Comprehensive Leviticus 27 Summary

A vow in Israel was voluntary, and a promise spoken to God was binding the moment it left a man’s mouth. This chapter sets out what happened next.

Only the tribe of Levi served at the tent (Numbers 3:6-9), and this chapter lets a man settle such a promise with silver rather than with the person. The sum was fixed by age and sex, topping out at fifty shekels. Commentators reckon a labourer earned about a shekel a month, which puts that figure near four years of wages, heavy enough to shut most of Israel out. So God wrote in an exception: the priest could set a lower figure to match what a poor man actually had.

Animals divided by whether they could go on the altar. One that could was God’s outright, and a man who tried to trade it for another lost both. One that could not was priced by the priest, and the owner could keep it by paying that price and a fifth more. A house was handled the same way.

Land was harder, because every fiftieth year sent land back to the family that first owned it. So an inherited field was priced by the amount of barley needed to sow it, and the figure fell as that year came nearer.

A man could buy his field back by adding a fifth. If he chose not to, the field passed to the priests for good. A field a man had bought rather than inherited was valued only up to that year, then went home to the family it came from.

Some things could not be vowed at all, because they were God’s already: firstborn animals, and the tenth of the harvest and the herd. And one class of gift, called devoted, had no way back at any price.

Then the book signs off.

One Word Summary

• Vows: what a person freely promises God
• Estimation: the chapter’s own word, and its most repeated one
• Redemption: the price of buying a gift back
• Ownership: everything promised was already His

In One Sentence

At Sinai the LORD tells Moses what an Israelite must pay to recover anything he has promised God, sets the priest to value each person, animal, house and field, and closes the book by naming the gifts that can never be bought back.

Theme of Leviticus 27

Leviticus 27 is about ownership. Everything an Israelite could promise God already belonged to God, so a vow never added to His property. It put into words what was true anyway. Two further ideas run alongside that one and the chapter will not let either go.

God holds a man to what he has said, which is why taking a gift back costs a fifth more than giving it. And God fits the price to the giver, which is why a poor man is valued by what he has rather than by the scale.

Leviticus 27 Outline

• Leviticus 27:1-2: The LORD tells Moses how a vow that promises a person to God is to be settled.
• Leviticus 27:3-7: A fixed scale sets the redemption price of a person by age and sex.
• Leviticus 27:8: A man too poor to pay the scale is valued by the priest according to what he can afford.
• Leviticus 27:9-10: An animal fit for sacrifice becomes holy once given, and swapping it forfeits both animals.
• Leviticus 27:11-13: An animal unfit for sacrifice is valued by the priest and may be bought back at that value plus a fifth.
• Leviticus 27:14-15: A house given to the LORD is valued by the priest and may be bought back at that value plus a fifth.
• Leviticus 27:16-18: An inherited field is priced by the amount of barley needed to sow it, with the price reduced for the years already gone since the year of jubile.
• Leviticus 27:19: The man who gave the field may recover it by adding a fifth to its price.
• Leviticus 27:20-21: A field he declines to redeem, or has already sold, becomes the priest’s possession at the jubile.
• Leviticus 27:22-24: A field a man bought is valued only up to the jubile, when it returns to the family that owned it.
• Leviticus 27:25: Every valuation is measured by the sanctuary shekel of twenty gerahs.
• Leviticus 27:26-27: A firstborn animal may not be vowed because it is the LORD’s already, though an unclean firstborn may be redeemed or sold.
• Leviticus 27:28: Nothing devoted to the LORD may be sold or bought back.
• Leviticus 27:29: No person devoted may be ransomed.
• Leviticus 27:30-31: The tenth of the land’s crop and fruit belongs to the LORD and may be redeemed at its value plus a fifth.
• Leviticus 27:32-33: Every tenth animal passing under the rod is holy, and may not be inspected, exchanged, or redeemed.
• Leviticus 27:34: Moses records that these are the commandments the LORD gave him at Mount Sinai.

The Valuation Scale

Leviticus 27:3-7 is the only fixed price list of its kind in the Law. These are redemption sums for a person promised to God, paid in silver.

Verse 25 fixes the unit so nobody could argue about it: “twenty gerahs shall be the shekel.” Every payment had to be weighed against the sanctuary’s own standard weight rather than a local one.

Observations from Leviticus 27

The Chapter Keeps Saying “Estimation”

The King James word “estimation” appears in verses 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 23, 25 and 27, sixteen of the chapter’s thirty-four. It means a value set by someone who has the authority to set it. The repetition carries the chapter’s point in miniature: nothing here is priced by the man who owns it, and everything is priced by God or by the priest who speaks for Him.

The Fifth Part Comes Back Five Times

The surcharge for recovering a gift appears in verses 13, 15, 19, 27 and 31, in almost identical wording each time. It is charged on an unclean animal, a house, a field, a firstborn, and a tithe, which covers nearly everything a man could take back. God allowed a change of mind and never made it free.

The Animal Law Opens and Closes the Same Way

Verse 10 forbids a man to swap a vowed animal, and rules that if he does, both animals become holy. Verse 33 says the same thing about the tithed animal, twenty-three verses later. The chapter puts the same fence around the first gift a man chooses to bring and the last one he owes, so the rule holds whether the giving was his idea or God’s.

Everything Sorts Into Two Piles

Read the chapter looking only for the word “redeem” and it falls into two halves. Verses 3 to 8, 11 to 19 and verse 31 cover what can be bought back: people, unclean animals, a house, a field, and the crop tithe. Verses 9, 26, 28 and 33 cover what cannot. That line separates what a man may still reconsider from what has passed out of his hands for good.

Difficult Verses Explained

What Does Leviticus 27:29 Mean, and Does It Command Human Sacrifice?

Scripture rules out the human sacrifice reading. The verse says, “None devoted, which shall be devoted of men, shall be redeemed; but shall surely be put to death.” Anyone under this kind of ban had to face it, and money could buy no way out. The word behind “devoted” is a stronger word than the ordinary one for a vow, and it describes something placed under God’s judgment and put beyond all human use, as Jericho was (Joshua 6:17).

Most commentators read the verse as governing people already under a sentence passed by God or by a lawful court, rather than a promise any private man could make about someone else, and some read it to mean the person stayed devoted until death rather than being executed. On either reading, God calls the burning of sons and daughters an abomination He hates and something that never entered His mind (Deuteronomy 12:31; Jeremiah 7:31), so this verse cannot be asking for such an offering. Scripture leaves some of the detail open here.

Why Does Leviticus 27 Price a Man Higher Than a Woman?

The chapter never gives a reason. Most commentators explain the figures by the work a person could do for the sanctuary in a farming economy, where a man between twenty and sixty could carry the heaviest load, and the young and the old could carry less. That is a reasonable reading, but it is a reading rather than something the text states.

What Scripture does say clearly is that these sums are redemption prices for a promise, not a measure of anyone’s worth to God, and that before Him “there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). Rank and sex make no difference to how God receives a person.

Why Does the Dedicated Field in Leviticus 27:21 Never Return to Its Owner?

Because the man has already turned down the way back. The law priced an inherited field cheaply and let him recover it for a fifth more, and many commentators read that low price as designed to keep family land in the family. Verse 20 covers the man who declines that offer, or who has sold the field on.

At the jubile the field then “shall be holy unto the LORD, as a field devoted; the possession thereof shall be the priest’s.” The land becomes God’s permanently and the priests hold it from then on. The loss falls on a choice, not on an accident.

Why Could the Tithed Animal Not Be Inspected or Swapped in Leviticus 27:33?

Because the tenth belonged to God before anyone looked at it. The animals were counted as they filed out, and every tenth one was marked as it came: “He shall not search whether it be good or bad, neither shall he change it.” The owner had to leave the animal exactly as it fell to him and hand it over as it was.

Where the tenth animal was his finest, he still had to let it go, and where it was his weakest, he still had to give that one. Trying to swap it cost him both animals. Taking the choosing away also took the pretending away, since nobody could look generous or look robbed by how the count fell.

Common Misunderstandings

• That Leviticus 27 puts a price on human life. The sums are what a man paid to settle a promise he had made about a person, not a valuation of that person before God. The chapter is pricing a vow.
• That Leviticus 27 is about slavery. No one is bought or sold here. A man promises God someone’s service, then pays money instead, and verse 8 exists to keep a poor man in reach of doing so.
• That the twenty percent was a penalty on the poor. The fifth part was charged for reversing a gift already given. Poverty was handled the opposite way, by lowering the price (Leviticus 27:8).
• That redeeming a tithe was a way out of tithing. The tenth stayed God’s either way. The fifth part was the cost of paying it in money rather than in grain or fruit (Leviticus 27:31).
• That chapter 27 is a stray appendix. Chapter 26 ends with God’s own commitments to Israel and chapter 27 with Israel’s to God, and both close with almost the same words about Mount Sinai (Leviticus 26:46; 27:34). That makes chapter 27 read as the answer to chapter 26 rather than as a leftover.

Christ Connection

This chapter runs on one word, and it is a word the New Testament takes straight over. To redeem something was to buy back what already belonged to another, and Peter uses that word for what Christ did: “ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold” (1 Peter 1:18).

Silver could settle a vow, and it could never settle a soul. The price Christ paid was His own blood, and Hebrews says He entered the holy place with it once and “obtained eternal redemption for us” (Hebrews 9:12), meaning the buying back He did will never need repeating.

Four details in Leviticus 27 point toward Him more closely.

• The thirty shekels. A woman in her working years was valued at thirty shekels (Leviticus 27:4), the same sum Exodus 21:32 sets as compensation for a servant gored by an ox. Zechariah later calls thirty pieces of silver “a goodly price that I was prised at of them” (Zechariah 11:13), speaking of what Israel thought its shepherd was worth, and Matthew records that the chief priests “covenanted with him for thirty pieces of silver” (Matthew 26:15). That was the agreed price for handing Jesus over, and Matthew 27:9 says the prophet’s words about thirty pieces of silver were fulfilled when it was paid. The figure Israel used to settle a promise about a person is the figure they settled on for the Son of God.
• The offering that could not be exchanged. An animal given to God could not be swapped for another (Leviticus 27:9-10). Hebrews applies that same finality to Christ: “a body hast thou prepared me” (Hebrews 10:5), and by that offering “we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Hebrews 10:10). There was no substitute for Him and no second attempt.
• The devoted thing that could not be ransomed. Some things passed beyond any price (Leviticus 27:28-29). Paul says Christ “hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13), which means He went to the place money could not reach and brought His people out of it.
• The price fitted to the giver. The priest re-valued a poor man by what he could afford (Leviticus 27:8). The same mercy let a poor mother bring two birds instead of a lamb (Leviticus 12:8), which is what Mary brought when she presented Jesus (Luke 2:24).

The chapter ends by saying these are the commandments God gave at Sinai. Paul tells us where those commandments were always heading: “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth” (Romans 10:4). The law was pointing at Him the whole way through.

When, Where, and Why

• When: At Mount Sinai, roughly a year after Israel came out of Egypt and before the camp sets out in Numbers. Leviticus 27:34 places the chapter there by name.
• Where: In the wilderness of Sinai, with the tent of worship at the centre of the camp. The priest does the valuing, and the silver goes to the sanctuary, so the whole chapter is anchored to that one place.
• Why: Israel was already a people who made vows long before Sinai, since Jacob had made one at Bethel generations earlier (Genesis 28:20-22). God does not abolish the practice; He regulates it, so a promise made in a hard moment could be kept honestly. And a book about living with a holy God had to close with what His people say back to Him.

Key Verses

“Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When a man shall make a singular vow, the persons shall be for the LORD by thy estimation.”

Leviticus 27:2

This is the premise the whole chapter rests on. A special promise dedicating a person to God was answered by a set price, so a vow was never left as words alone.

“But if he be poorer than thy estimation, then he shall present himself before the priest, and the priest shall value him; according to his ability that vowed shall the priest value him.”

Leviticus 27:8

If a man could not pay the fixed rate, the priest set a lower one that matched what he had. This is the mercy hidden in a page of figures, and it kept the door open to everyone.

“And all the tithe of the land, whether of the seed of the land, or of the fruit of the tree, is the LORD’S: it is holy unto the LORD.”

Leviticus 27:30

A tenth of everything the ground produced, whether grain sown in a field or fruit picked from a tree, belonged to God and was set apart for Him. The verse states ownership rather than requesting a gift, which is why the tithe is never described here as generosity.

“These are the commandments, which the LORD commanded Moses for the children of Israel in mount Sinai.”

Leviticus 27:34

These are the orders God gave Moses for Israel at Sinai. It is the last line of Leviticus, and it signs the book the way chapter 26 signed the covenant terms.

Key Lessons from Leviticus 27

• A promise to God is free to make and binding once it is made (Leviticus 27:2).
• God sets the price of coming to Him low enough that no one is shut out by poverty (Leviticus 27:8).
• What is given to God is no longer ours to trade or improve on (Leviticus 27:9-10).
• Changing your mind about a gift is allowed, and it costs something (Leviticus 27:13).
• Some things given to God can never be taken back at any price (Leviticus 27:28).
• The tenth is God’s before anyone decides anything about it (Leviticus 27:30).

To go deeper into the lessons from this chapter, read our full study: Lessons From Leviticus 27.

Bible Study Questions

1. According to Leviticus 27:2, what makes a vow different from the offerings commanded earlier in Leviticus?
2. Why does verse 8 let the priest set a lower price, and what does that tell you about the God who wrote the scale?
3. What is the difference between something dedicated in Leviticus 27:14 and something devoted in Leviticus 27:28?
4. Why do you think God refused to let the owner inspect or exchange the tenth animal in verses 32 and 33?
5. Leviticus 26 ends with what God commits to Israel and Leviticus 27 with what Israel commits to God. Why is that a fitting last word for this book?
6. Is there something you have promised God that you have not yet done, and what would it take to do it this week?

Frequently Asked Questions

Leviticus 27, The Full Text (KJV)

Read the full chapter below for reference.

1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,

2 Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When a man shall make a singular vow, the persons shall be for the LORD by thy estimation.

3 And thy estimation shall be of the male from twenty years old even unto sixty years old, even thy estimation shall be fifty shekels of silver, after the shekel of the sanctuary.

4 And if it be a female, then thy estimation shall be thirty shekels.

5 And if it be from five years old even unto twenty years old, then thy estimation shall be of the male twenty shekels, and for the female ten shekels.

6 And if it be from a month old even unto five years old, then thy estimation shall be of the male five shekels of silver, and for the female thy estimation shall be three shekels of silver.

7 And if it be from sixty years old and above; if it be a male, then thy estimation shall be fifteen shekels, and for the female ten shekels.

8 But if he be poorer than thy estimation, then he shall present himself before the priest, and the priest shall value him; according to his ability that vowed shall the priest value him.

9 And if it be a beast, whereof men bring an offering unto the LORD, all that any man giveth of such unto the LORD shall be holy.

10 He shall not alter it, nor change it, a good for a bad, or a bad for a good: and if he shall at all change beast for beast, then it and the exchange thereof shall be holy.

11 And if it be any unclean beast, of which they do not offer a sacrifice unto the LORD, then he shall present the beast before the priest:

12 And the priest shall value it, whether it be good or bad: as thou valuest it, who art the priest, so shall it be.

13 But if he will at all redeem it, then he shall add a fifth part thereof unto thy estimation.

14 And when a man shall sanctify his house to be holy unto the LORD, then the priest shall estimate it, whether it be good or bad: as the priest shall estimate it, so shall it stand.

15 And if he that sanctified it will redeem his house, then he shall add the fifth part of the money of thy estimation unto it, and it shall be his.

16 And if a man shall sanctify unto the LORD some part of a field of his possession, then thy estimation shall be according to the seed thereof: an homer of barley seed shall be valued at fifty shekels of silver.

17 If he sanctify his field from the year of jubile, according to thy estimation it shall stand.

18 But if he sanctify his field after the jubile, then the priest shall reckon unto him the money according to the years that remain, even unto the year of the jubile, and it shall be abated from thy estimation.

19 And if he that sanctified the field will in any wise redeem it, then he shall add the fifth part of the money of thy estimation unto it, and it shall be assured to him.

20 And if he will not redeem the field, or if he have sold the field to another man, it shall not be redeemed any more.

21 But the field, when it goeth out in the jubile, shall be holy unto the LORD, as a field devoted; the possession thereof shall be the priest’s.

22 And if a man sanctify unto the LORD a field which he hath bought, which is not of the fields of his possession;

23 Then the priest shall reckon unto him the worth of thy estimation, even unto the year of the jubile: and he shall give thine estimation in that day, as a holy thing unto the LORD.

24 In the year of the jubile the field shall return unto him of whom it was bought, even to him to whom the possession of the land did belong.

25 And all thy estimations shall be according to the shekel of the sanctuary: twenty gerahs shall be the shekel.

26 Only the firstling of the beasts, which should be the LORD’S firstling, no man shall sanctify it; whether it be ox, or sheep: it is the LORD’S.

27 And if it be of an unclean beast, then he shall redeem it according to thine estimation, and shall add a fifth part of it thereto: or if it be not redeemed, then it shall be sold according to thy estimation.

28 Notwithstanding no devoted thing, that a man shall devote unto the LORD of all that he hath, both of man and beast, and of the field of his possession, shall be sold or redeemed: every devoted thing is most holy unto the LORD.

29 None devoted, which shall be devoted of men, shall be redeemed; but shall surely be put to death.

30 And all the tithe of the land, whether of the seed of the land, or of the fruit of the tree, is the LORD’S: it is holy unto the LORD.

31 And if a man will at all redeem ought of his tithes, he shall add thereto the fifth part thereof.

32 And concerning the tithe of the herd, or of the flock, even of whatsoever passeth under the rod, the tenth shall be holy unto the LORD.

33 He shall not search whether it be good or bad, neither shall he change it: and if he change it at all, then both it and the change thereof shall be holy; it shall not be redeemed.

34 These are the commandments, which the LORD commanded Moses for the children of Israel in mount Sinai.