🔢WEB · Numbers 3:48
What does Numbers 3:48 mean?
"and you shall give the money, with which their remainder is redeemed, to Aaron and to his sons.”"
— Numbers 3:48 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
“Take the Levites instead of all the firstborn among the children of Israel, and the livestock of the Levites instead of their livestock; and the Levites shall be mine. I am Yahweh.
For the redemption of the two hundred seventy-three of the firstborn of the children of Israel, who exceed the number of the Levites,
you shall take five shekels apiece for each one; after the shekel of the sanctuary you shall take them (the shekel is twenty gerahs):
and you shall give the money, with which their remainder is redeemed, to Aaron and to his sons.”
Moses took the redemption money from those who exceeded the number of those who were redeemed by the Levites;
from the firstborn of the children of Israel he took the money, one thousand three hundred sixty-five shekels, after the shekel of the sanctuary:
and Moses gave the redemption money to Aaron and to his sons, according to Yahweh’s word, as Yahweh commanded Moses.
Explanation
Numbers 3:48 comes at the end of a passage dealing with a census and a redemption transaction among the Israelites in the wilderness. In plain terms, the verse instructs that the silver collected as payment for redeeming the surplus firstborn Israelite males—those not matched one-to-one by a Levite substitute—was to be handed over to Aaron and his sons, the priests, for their use.
The background
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