to value it “between good and bad,” i.e., neither very high as if it were good, nor very low as if it were bad, but at a medium price; and it was to be according to this valuation, i.e., to be worth the value placed upon it (הכּהן כּערכּך according to thy, the priest's, valuation), namely, when sold for the good of the sanctuary and its servants.
Verse 13
But if the person vowing wanted to redeem it, he was to add a fifth above the valuation price, as a kind of compensation for taking back the animal he had vowed (cf. Lev 5:16).
verses 14-15
When a house was vowed, the same rules applied as in the case of unclean cattle. Knobel's supposition, that the person making the vow was to pay the valuation price if he did not wish to redeem the house, is quite a groundless supposition. The house that was not redeemed was sold, of course, for the good of the sanctuary.
verses 16-25
With regard to the vowing of land, a difference was made between a field inherited and one that had been purchased.
Verse 16
If any one sanctified to the Lord “of the field of his possession,” i.e., a portion of his hereditary property, the valuation was to be made according to the measure of the seed sown; and an omer of barley was to be appraised at fifty shekels, so that a field sown with an omer of barley would be valued at fifty shekels. As an omer was equal to ten ephahs (Eze 45:11), and, according to the calculation made by Thenius, held about 225 lbs., the fifty shekels cannot have been the average value of the yearly produce of such a field, but must be understood, as it was by the Rabbins, as the value of the produce of a complete jubilee period of 49 or 50 years; so that whoever wished to redeem the field had to pay, according to Mishnah, Erachin vii. 1, a shekel and a fifth per annum.
verses 17-19
If he sanctified his field from the year of jubilee, i.e., immediately after the expiration of that year, it was to “stand according to thy valuation,” i.e., no alteration was to be made in the valuation. But if it took place after the year of jubilee, i.e., some time or some years after, the priest was to estimate the value according to the number of years to the next year of jubilee, and “it shall be abated from thy valuation,” sc., praeteritum tempus, the time that has elapsed since the year of jubilee. Hence, for example, if the field was vowed ten years after the year of jubilee, the man who wished to redeem it had only forty
