use amongst the Jews was most undoubtedly the Phoenician shekel, obtained, as we saw above, by dividing the amount of silver equivalent to the double gold shekel into 15 parts. But it may be reasonably doubted whether the silver piece or shekel (called always a didrachmon in the Septuagint) mentioned in Genesis and Judges is the Phoenician shekel. It is used without any distinctive epithet, as if it were the weight par excellence, and is employed for gold as well as silver. But when we turn to certain other passages we find mention made of a shekel called the Shekel of the Sanctuary[1]. This shekel is frequently mentioned, generally in connection with silver, and in reference to such things as the contribution of the half-shekel to the Tabernacle, the redemption of the firstborn, the sacrifice of animals, and the payment of the seer. Yet we find this shekel likewise employed in the estimation of gold, a fact which at once shews that it is neither the Phoenician shekel of 220 grs. nor the Persic of 172 grs., both of which were confined to silver. It must then have been either the ox-unit of 130 grs. or the heavy shekel of 260 grs. As the latter was confined in use to gold it follows that the ox-unit of 130 grs. alone fits the conditions required. If then we can discover what in the case of either silver or gold was the weight of this shekel, we shall have determined it for both metals, for it will hardly be maintained that there was one shekel of the Sanctuary for gold and one of different weight for silver.
Now we read in Exodus (xxxviii. 24 seqq.) that "all the gold that was occupied for the work in all the work of the holy [place], even the gold of the offering, was twenty and nine talents and seven hundred and thirty shekels, after the shekel of the Sanctuary. And the silver of them that were numbered of the congregation was an hundred talents and a thousand seven hundred and three-score and fifteen shekels, after the shekel of the Sanctuary; a bekah for every man, that is, half a shekel after the shekel of the Sanctuary, for every one that went to be numbered from twenty years old and upward, for six hundred thousand and three thousand and five hundred and fifty men. And the brass of the offering was seventy
- ↑ Exod. xxx. 13. Levit. v. 15, etc.
