Lev. 25:1-27:34
Jer. 32:6-27
Jer. 16:19-17:14

This portion reading for May 9, 2026 is a double portion, B’har (On Mount) and B’chukkotai (By My Regulations), concluding the book of Leviticus. The passages are cited above. I am super excited to finish up Leviticus. It has been so rich for me. I didn’t know what I would find, and I have found more than I can handle in a single go-around. Messiah is everywhere! I am also super excited to get into Numbers and catch up with the current portion readings. But I don’t want to slight any portion nor skip any, so I just keep trucking.

In this post, I will cover the Shmita and the significance of the latter blessing that will ultimately be found in Messiah, the Jubilee (or Yovel) and how that ties to both Messiah and the unfulfilled destiny of Israel, and finally slavery, human monetary valuation, and what that has to do with Messiah. Finally, I will wrap it all up with verses from the Bible that show us nothing is impossible with God, from the restoration of a nation and people after millennia to souls held captive to seemingly impossible bondage.

The Shmita and the Latter Blessing

The Lord spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying, ² “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, When you come into the land that I give you, the land shall keep a Sabbath to the Lord. ³ For six years you shall sow your field, and for six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its fruits, ⁴ but in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a Sabbath to the Lord. You shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard. ⁵ You shall not reap what grows of itself in your harvest, or gather the grapes of your undressed vine. It shall be a year of solemn rest for the land (Lev. 25:1-5).

God gave Israel the weekly appointed time of Shabbat, the seven annual holidays of Passover through Tabernacles, and He also gave appointed times that occurred over longer periods of time. This post will cover those. Just like Israel was supposed to rest from work every seven days, the land was supposed to rest every seven years. It was supposed to lay fallow. The people were supposed to trust God. The people were supposed to collect the harvest of the sixth year and live on that. Ancient Israel was an agriculturally based society. It’s like telling Americans to take a sabbatical every seven years and live off their savings and trust God will bless their income so much in the sixth year that they could live off of it for at least two years. Since most Americans live paycheck to paycheck, I can’t imagine many would do that. And sadly, ancient Israel did not obey either. We will get to the consequences of that later in this post.

There is a special supernatural blessing that God gives His people to get through the Sabbath year.

¹⁸ “Therefore you shall do my statutes and keep my rules and perform them, and then you will dwell in the land securely. ¹⁹ The land will yield its fruit, and you will eat your fill and dwell in it securely. ²⁰ And if you say, ‘What shall we eat in the seventh year, if we may not sow or gather in our crop?’ ²¹ I will command my blessing on you in the sixth year, so that it will produce a crop sufficient for three years. ²² When you sow in the eighth year, you will be eating some of the old crop; you shall eat the old until the ninth year, when its crop arrives (Lev. 25:18-22).

As I’m writing this, I was reminded that Jesus said some words very similar to these that God gave to Israel:

²⁵ “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? ²⁶ Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? ²⁷ And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? ²⁸ And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, ²⁹ yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. ³⁰ But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? ³¹ Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ ³² For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. ³³ But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you (Mt. 6:25-32).

When Jesus says, “do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’” He is parallelling what the Lord said in the wilderness: “And if you say, ‘What shall we eat in the seventh year, if we may not sow or gather in our crop?’ ²¹ I will command my blessing on you in the sixth year, so that it will produce a crop sufficient for three years” (Lev. 25:20-21). Jesus says, “if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?” (Mt. 6:30). Jesus tells us not to worry, but He also gives an imperitive to put in place of that worry:

¹⁹ “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, ²⁰ but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. ²¹ For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also (Mt. 6:19-21).

God wants us to get off the temporary and mundane humdrum of life and off things that won’t last anyway and focus on the eternal and what matters in the end. We have to trust God to provide like the Israelites had to trust God to provide. Does it mean people shouldn’t work? Of course not! Israel had to harvest the land for six years. They only had one year off. The point is where your focus is. When you have to choose between God and pragmatism, what will you choose? Just like Belle is Disney’s animated film Beauty and the Beast says, “There must be more than this provincial life!”

Paul, in one of his letters to the Corinthians, tells them, “For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal (2 Cor. 4:18). For Israel, those crops they forfeit in the seventh year were transient, but their trust in the Lord was eternal.

As a mother, many times, when I have free time, I feel torn between cleaning the house or sitting down to study the Word and write these posts. In those moments, and as I read about the Shmita, I am reminded of the story of Mary and Martha. Jesus visited their home in Bethsaida. While there, Martha served, but her sister, Mary, sat at Jesus’ feet to hear Him teach. Martha became angry with Mary and asked Jesus to correct her. Jesus said, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her” (Lk. 10:41-42). Luke records Martha was “distracted with much serving” (Lk. 10:40). The right balance is very important. Serving is good. The Bible tells us to serve one another (Gal. 5:13, 1 Pet. 4:10). But too much serving and no time with the Lord is bad. Martha was focused on the transient things, the things that moth and rust can destroy, but Mary was focused on the eternal things that moth and rust cannot destroy, what “will not be taken away from her.”

I sweep, I wash the dishes, and at the end of the day, I look around the house again and say to myself, “Why do I bother?” I have to do these things sometime or else my life will be completely dysfunctional and I would be very unloving to my family. It’s all about a balance. For six years, Israel had to work the land, but for one year, the land needed to rest just like they rested every seventh day. That allowed some good opportunity to sit down at the Lord’s feet and take that time that would have been on temporary labor and invest it in an eternal relationship with Him. Deuteronomy 8:3 says, “man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” Jesus knew this verse and quoted it when He was tempted to choose between obedience to the Father and the temptations of the temporary world (Mt. 4:4; Lk. 4:4).

Jesus, as Messiah, says His words are the Father’s words. As Israel lived by every word of God, believers today can live by every word of Messiah. Jesus said,
“For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment—what to say and what to speak” (Jn. 12:49). Jesus also said, “Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works” (Jn. 14:10). Jesus also said, “Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me” (Jn. 14:24). Peter sumarized it like this: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (Jn. 6:68).

Just as the Israelites rested from their labor every Sabbath, and just as the land rested every seven years, we can rest in the words of Messiah and trust Him to provide for us both temporally and eternally. Sometimes that means we have to unplug from the world.

I usually save my poem for the end, and I usually try to write a new poem for each post, but this poem is so appropriate for this passage that I felt like I should repost it in this section.

Set your mind on things above
And not on things below,
For wherever your treasure is
Your heart will be also.
Do not store your treasure up
Where moth and rust destroy,
Where thieves can break into and steal
And you will none enjoy.
Store your treasure in heaven
Where moth and rust can’t touch.
If your treasure stays on the earth
It won’t amount to much.
Store your treasure in heaven
Where thieves can’t steal away,
Because if your treasure’s up there,
You know it’s there to stay.
The things that last, that will remain
Are things we cannot see,
And wherever your treasure is
Your heart will also be.

Jesus and the Jubilee

⁸ “You shall count seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, so that the time of the seven weeks of years shall give you forty-nine years. ⁹ Then you shall sound the loud trumpet on the tenth day of the seventh month. On the Day of Atonement you shall sound the trumpet throughout all your land. ¹⁰ And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you, when each of you shall return to his property and each of you shall return to his clan (Lev. 25:8-10).

The Jubilee (or Yovel) was a reset on all the damage and changes that could happen in a fallen world. People go into debt and they have to sell their land, or they have to commit to service to pay off a debt. Or people moved for one reason or another and lost their land inheritance. The Yovel set everything back to the way it was. People were free of debt and service, and people could return to their lands and homes that had been lost for one reason or another. This bi-centennial occurrence was initiated with the blast of the shofar on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. A passage from Isaiah sounds a lot like the Yovel:

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
    because the Lord has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor;
    he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
    and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
² to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,
    and the day of vengeance of our God;
    to comfort all who mourn;
³ to grant to those who mourn in Zion—
    to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
    the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit;
that they may be called oaks of righteousness,
    the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified.
⁴ They shall build up the ancient ruins;
    they shall raise up the former devastations;
they shall repair the ruined cities,
    the devastations of many generations (Is. 61:1-4).

The voice of this prophecy proclaims liberty to the captives like the Yovel was to proclaim liberty to the land’s inhabitants. The poor receive good news like those in debt during the Yovel received good news that their debts were cancelled. Ancient ruins are rebuilt like the way people would return to their inheritance during the Yovel. When Jesus stood up in synagogue one Shabbat to read, He read this passage as pertaining to Himself:

¹⁶ And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. ¹⁷ And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written,

¹⁸ “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
    and recovering of sight to the blind,
    to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
¹⁹ to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

²⁰ And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. ²¹ And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Lk. 4:16-21).

Since this language in Isaiah is so similar to the language in the Torah used of the Yovel, I would posit that Jesus is saying He is the fulfillment of the Yovel. Jesus says the meek will inherit the earth (Mt. 5:5). In Jesus the captives are freed: “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (Jn. 8:36). Through Jesus our debt accrued by sin is fully paid for: “you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross” (Col. 2:13-14). Jesus’ first coming fulfills the Yovel.

But I would also argue that another fulfillment of the Yovel is coming one day still. Jesus will return with the sound of the trumpet (Mt. 24:30-31), during which time all believers receive their full redemption and evildoers receive justice, just as Isaiah says, “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God” (61:2). Favor will be bestowed upon those who trust in Messiah, and vengeance upon those who do not. The speaker of Isaiah 61 says he is anointed by the Lord. Messiah means anointed one.

As the refrain of Paul Wilbur’s song Days of Elijah go,

Behold He comes, riding on the clouds
Shining like the sun, at the trumpet call
Lift your voice, it’s a year of jubilee
Out of Zion’s hill salvation comes

In my last post How God Speaks Through His Appointed Times, I talked a lot about the appointed days, including the Day of Atonement and how similar it is to the Bible’s description of judgement day or the Day of the Lord. On that last day, also, will be a liberation for all who are poor who put their trust in Messiah. He will restore all things to them that had been lost in this fallen world. The trumpet of Yom Kippur is linked to both judgment and atonement, but also liberation during Yovel. Jesus will do all of this when He, the Anointed One, returns.

When Each Shall Return to His Own Land

²³ “The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine. For you are strangers and sojourners with me. ²⁴ And in all the country you possess, you shall allow a redemption of the land.

One of my major points throughout this blog series is that God’s promises to Israel for the land and inheritance and Aaronic priesthood are forever. In this passage, the CJSB (Complete Jewish Study Bible) calls Israel “temporary residents (25:23). Aha! There it is! Israel is temporary. No, not quite. Israel is not temporary, but selling the land out is temporary. On the contrary, the land perpetually should return to the descendants of the tribe to which it was given. Scripture helps interpret Scripture, because just a few verses later, it says specifically about the Levites that their land is “their possession forever” (Lev. 25:34). Last I checked, forever means forever.

Tying this into the Haftarah, in Jeremiah 32:6-27, God gave Jerusalem over to the Babylonians because of Israel’s disobedience. The curses upon disobedience listed in Leviticus chapter 26 came true. But God also gave the promise that Israel would own the land after “a long time” (Jer. 32:14, CJSB). Jeremiah was told to redeem a plot of land from his cousin because he had the right to redeem it. Oh, and by the way, the Babylonian army is at the gates ready to take over the city. God told Jeremiah to put the deed in a clay jar to be preserved for a long time.

Fast forward to today. It’s been a long time. The nations are at Israel’s door telling them their land is not their own. But their legitimacy does not come from the nations. It comes from God. And God said this:

Take these deeds, both this sealed deed of purchase and this open deed, and put them in an earthenware vessel, that they may last for a long time. ¹⁵ For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land’ (Jer. 32:14-15).

To be specific to the context, houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought by the people of Israel. Although there had always remained some Jewish presence in the land, beginning largely during the 1800s and into the 1900s, that is exactly what happened. In his book, The Israel Decree, Amir Tsarfati writes,

Contrary to modern stories of how the Jews swept in and stole the land, all of the acreage for the early settlements was purchased from Arab owners who were more than happy to sell their properties, which were worthless because they were arid desert or murky swampland.

Just as Jeremiah prophesied, the land was once again sold into the hands of the children of Israel. It was a long time, yes, but God’s promise, that deed in a jar, was supposed to last a long time. We see a perfect real-world example of this with the Dead Sea Scrolls. I had the amazing opportunity to see the Dead Sea Scrolls at an exhibit in Mobile, Alabama years ago when I was a high school student. It obviously left a great impression on me because I have very vivid memories of that experience over twenty years later. I saw another exhibit on the Dead Sea Scrolls more recently at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC. Those scrolls were largely the Word of God preserved in clay jars just like the one described in Jeremiah 32, and they survived in those jars for over 2,000 years to be found by a shepherd boy in 1947. It was the year before Israel became a sovereign nation again. That is no coincidence! The timing of the discovery is reflective of the reality that was occurring and would occur. Included in those rediscovered scrolls was the text of Jeremiah 32! I wonder if Jeremiah’s actual deed is still out there waiting to be discovered. If a literal scroll in a literal clay jar can survive for thousands of years, so can God’s promise, the deed.

According to the Bible, the Shmita years the Israelites did not observe were paid for in the Babylonian exile.

²⁰ He took into exile in Babylon those who had escaped from the sword, and they became servants to him and to his sons until the establishment of the kingdom of Persia, ²¹ to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its Sabbaths. All the days that it lay desolate it kept Sabbath, to fulfill seventy years (2 Chron. 36:20-21).

If the years of the Babylonian exile represented the years Israel failed to observe the Shmita, then Israel did not observe the Shmita for 490 years. God forgave their disobedience, and they were allowed to return to the land, and after that return, Messiah, Jesus, came. That same Jesus had a conversation with one of His disciples that is recorded in the Gospel of Matthew:

²¹ Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” ²² Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.

The ESV footnote says it could also be translated seventy times seven. That is how the CJSB translates it. Well, seventy times seven is 490, the number we calculate if we look at the number of years Israel was punished for transgressing! The heart of Jesus’ teaching is to forgive your brother as many times as he transgresses you. If God has forsaken Israel since the time of Jesus, why does He not practice what He teaches His own disciples to observe? Why are they not rejected after the Babylonian exile but then somehow they are after the Roman diaspora? You can be forgiven and still have to deal with consequences for your actions. I forgive my children after they do wrong, but I still have to discipline them if they are going to learn. It’s not that hard to understand.

The Jews were expelled from their land again after the Roman’s destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. Yes, they had largely rejected the Son of God, and yes, the curses of Leviticus 26 were fulfilled up into modern times (Lev. 26:14-43). Mark Twain wrote in his book The Innocents Abroad about his travels to the land of Israel which was called Palestine. It was a barren land. Malaria was rampant. Amir Tsarfati writes in The Isreal Decree,

In his 1867 travel memoir The Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain wrote, “There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country…the only difference between the roads and the surrounding country, perhaps, is that there are rather more rocks in the roads than in the surrounding country.”

But God never forsook His people, not in the Babylonian exile, not after the Roman diaspora, and not now. Leviticus 26:44-45 says,

⁴⁴ “Yet for all that, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not spurn them, neither will I abhor them so as to destroy them utterly and break my covenant with them, for I am the Lord their God. ⁴⁵ But I will for their sake remember the covenant with their forefathers, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God: I am the Lord.”

If God had a mic, He would drop it here.

Whose Slave Are You?

For they are my servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt; they shall not be sold as slaves (Lev. 25:42).

⁵⁵ For it is to me that the people of Israel are servants. They are my servants whom I brought out of the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God (Lev. 25:55).

What the ESV translates as servant, the CJB (Complete Jewish Bible) translates as slave. Israel is God’s “servants” or “slaves.” God specifically says He called them out of Egypt “so that you would not be their slaves” (Lev. 26:13). In my coverage of the Exodus, specifically in my post Names: Their Importance and Their Power, I compared the slavery of Egypt to the slavery to sin and this world. Jesus, like Moses, came to set us free from slavery, not slavery to Egypt specifically, but slavery to sin. And Jesus said the one whom He sets free is indeed free (Jn. 8:36). For Israel, there was either slavery to Egypt or service to God. They could not leave Egypt serving both. They had to leave as people freed from slavery to Egypt. For all people, there is either slavery to sin or service to God. No one can be free trying to serve both. Jesus said,

“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money (Mt. 6:24, see also Lk. 16:13).

Paul carries this dichotomy into his letter to the Romans and extends it to all types of sin:

¹⁶ Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? ¹⁷ But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, ¹⁸ and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. ¹⁹ I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification (Rom. 6:16-19).

You are either a slave to sin (“impurity” and “lawlessness”) or a slave to God (within Whom is righteousness and truth). The disciples were Jews. They knew the Torah very well and followed it. the Book of James, in particular, Martin Luther hated so much that he didn’t want it in the Bible because he thought it talked too much about works (or mitzvahs). James sees no conflict between Torah and Messiah. He is the one who says, “For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it” (James 2:10). James says he is a servant of God and Jesus (James 1:1). He sees no conflict because He understands God and Jesus are One.

Paul, likewise, a Pharisee who was training to be one of the upper ranks, has no problem saying he is a servant of Jesus (Rom. 1:1). Again, no conflict for him because God and Jesus are the same master.

Where God says to Israel, “I have broken the bars of your yoke” (Lev 26:13), it’s like Jesus completes the thought saying, “Take my yoke…my yoke is easy…burden light” (Mt. 11:29-30). Just like Israel was freed from Egypt to serve God, we can be freed from sin to serve the Lord. Through Jesus, God has freed us from slavery to sin to serve Him. We are going to serve something or someone whether we realize it or not, whether we want to or not.

Probably without realizing it, the Pharisees were serving the old master and making their disciples serve the old master too. They gave lip service to God but their actual service was to the old master. Jesus said the burden of Pharisees and Scribes was too heavy:

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, ² “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, ³ so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice. ⁴ They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger (Mt. 23:1-4).

In contrast, Jesus, who calls us to be His servants, give His people a light burden. It is impossible to serve the world, but we were made to serve God. Serving Jesus is serving God, because they are One and the same.

The Worth of a Person

Leviticus ends in a way that probably seems strange to just about any modern reader who is not acquainted with the text regularly. It ends with the monetary valuation of people. This is not the valuation of people in regard to buying and selling them as slaves. Israel was not to be enslaved, remember? This was the valuation of people in relation to their vows to God, and if they failed to complete their vows, there was a cost for their broken vow, or a cost for what or whom they dedicated to the Lord. Israel was God’s slaves, remember? I won’t get into the valuation scale that is iterated in Leviticus, but I will pull out the valuation of demographic categories for comparative purposes. For a male aged 20-60 years old, which is the category Jesus fell in at the end of His earthly ministry, Leviticus says, “[T]he valuation of a male from twenty years old up to sixty years old shall be fifty shekels of silver, according to the shekel of the sanctuary” (Lev. 27:3). So Jesus, if He broke His vow to the Father, should pay 50 sanctuary shekels, the standard of which did not change as far as I’m aware.

But Jesus did complete His vows. The night He was betrayed, He said, “I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do” (Jn. 17:4). And instead of Jesus paying money to the sanctuary for a broken vow, money comes out of the sanctuary to pay for Him. The priests, scribes, and Pharisees paid 30 pieces of silver for Him (Mt. 26:15). Those silver pieces could have been denarii, silver coins used in currency at the time. I am not an expert in ancient currency, so I may stand to be corrected, but this is my understanding at this time. Since there were four silver Roman coins in circulation at the time of Jesus, we don’t know exactly which one it was. Just for fun, I’ll go with the denarius since it was the most important coin of circulation and the one the Bible mentions.

The Roman denarius in AD 33 was about 3.4 grams of silver, and the sanctuary shekel was about 2/5 of an ounce (CBSB). We have to convert the denarius and shekel to the same measuring system. 1 ounce is about 28.35 grams, and 2/5 of an ounce is 11.34 grams. 1 sanctuary shekel was worth 11.34 grams compared to one denarius in AD 33 being worth 3.4 grams (the standard silver content being something that did change over time). 30 sanctuary shekels was worth 102 grams. One sanctuary shekel in AD 33 was worth 3.34 denarii. If Judas was paid in denarii, Jesus was bought with about nine sanctuary shekels. That’s less than the valuation of a woman over 60. In other words, Jesus was worth nothing to them.

If we take the coin with the highest amount of silver, the Tetradrachms of Tyre, or Tyrian shekels, which had 14 grams of silver, even if calculating with this higher value coin, coin specialists can still say,

What’s more revealing is the gospel writer Matthew’s intent. The phrase he used, “30 pieces of silver,” is a throwback to a reference in the book of Zechariah. In Zechariah 11 this phrase is used to mean the value of a slave and is based on Jewish Law. Exodus 21:32 states:

“If the bull gores a male or female slave, the owner must pay thirty shekels of silver to the master of the slave, and the bull is to be stoned to death.”

The prophet Zechariah asked the Israelites to pay him for the work he had done working among them, that’s what they gave him. It was meant to be an insult; they didn’t value his prophecy. Jehovah told Zechariah to throw this slave’s wage into the treasury (back in their faces).

So when Matthew says 30 pieces of silver and has Judas throw it back into the treasury, it’s an allusion to this story in Zechariah in which unfaithful Jews undervalued a prophet of the Lord with an insulting amount of money – what a slave is worth. Matthew is saying the priests were willing to pay almost nothing for Jesus. They were angry at Jesus for the scene he’d made at the temple overturning the moneylenders’ tables and railing against the corrupt priests profiting off the sacrifices people brought to the Jerusalem to make to God out of devotion and duty.

Thirty pieces of silver to the priests, to Matthew, to Zechariah, then, was the price of contempt (Grand Rapids Coins).

I think they were angry at Jesus for more than just turning over their money tables, but that’s not the point why I cite this source here. They aren’t historical, Biblical, or theological specialists. They are specialists in currency, and they understand the connection across the Old Testament in regard to valuation.

Jesus was the Father’s servant (Zech. 3:8). He came to do the Father’s will on earth. The scribes and Pharisees, whom Jesus referenced to as “bulls of Bashan” on the cross (see Mt. 27:46 and Ps. 22, which Jesus is quoting). They are the animal that gored the slave! They paid the 30 pieces of silver for killing God’s slave! If we look at it textually, that’s what it comes down to.

Whether we look at it concerning the highest currency value or just analyze the Biblical text, the scribes and Pharisees severely undervalued Jesus. You and I cannot make that same mistake today. He is worth so much more. He is worth everything.

Nothing Is Too Difficult for Thee

Through Jesus we receive blessing for obedience to God like the Israelites received blessing for obeying the Shmita. Through Jesus we find our Jubilee. Through Jesus Israel will be saved and given their inheritance. Through Jesus we are free from sin to serve God. Through Jesus we are given everything because He was valued as nothing in our place. How can this be?

This portion’s Haftarah answers that question with a question (concerning the restoration of Israel and the redemption of God’s people from the consequences of their sin). The Lord asks, “Is there anything too hard for me?” (Jer. 32:27). The obvious answer should be no. My first paragraph above can be summarized as the restoration of Israel and the redemption of God’s people from the consequences of their sin. Then look at what is recorded at the arrival of Messiah. The angel Gabriel tells Mary, “For nothing will be impossible with God” (Lk. 1:37).

Salvation from your situation might look impossible, but with God all things are possible (Mt. 19:26). Jeremiah thought it was impossible to come back from the Babylonian invasion, but they did seventy years later, and then they came back again as a sovereign nation in the 20th century. That sounds impossible, but it happened, because with God…

So too, deliverance from sin through Jesus Christ, Yeshua ha Mashiah might sound impossible, but with God…

My hope and prayer is that God makes the impossible His reality in you and me this day. Until next time, God bless.

Sources

The Bible. English Standard Version. Biblegateway.com. Accessed 9 Jun. 2026.

The Complete Jewish Study Bible. Peabody, Hendrickson Publishers, 2016.

How Much Were Judas Iscariot’s 30 Pieces of Silver Worth? – Grand Rapids Coins