The value of the sacred shekel in regard to the gerah is determined by Exod. xxx. 13 ; Lev. xxvii. 25 ; Num. iii. 47 ; Ezek. xlv. 12, to be twenty gerahs ; the half-shekel, bekak, is equal to ten gerahs.
The determination of the relative value of the manek is not easy, for it depends on a passage which in the Hebrew cannot be understood (Ezek.
t2), Twenty shekels, five and twenty shekels, fifteen shekels shall be your maneh,' but which in the Sept. (Cod. d4lex.) seems to state that a maneh was equal to fifty sacred shekels. Thus there ensues this table :— Kikkar Maneh 6o Shekel 300o 50 Eekah 6000 Too 2 Gerah 60,00o r000 20 ro The use of the precious metals as a me Hum of exchange in commerce dates back to a very early period of history. A common, recognised, and invariable standar(' of value, by means of which goods, instead of being exchanged in barter, might be bought and sold, is indispensable in any but a primitive state of trade. Accordingly Abraham buys a field by the intervention of silver. But this silver or gold must have an acknowledged value, else it cannot answer its purposes ; there must also be a means of ascertaining easily that the professed and ostensible is the real value of any particular portion. Hence coins which bear the image and superscription of Cmsar,' or some token to assure traders that the piece of money is right both in quality and in quantity. In early periods these tokens would obviously be imperfect. The quantity was ascertained by weight, the quality by inspec tion. If now we inquire how soon the Hebrews possessed money of a fixed value, we find Abraham himself buying a field for ` four hundred shekels of silver current with the merchant,' which value was ascertained by weight. Here the skelrel is a re cognised ordinary unit. This, at least, is clear. The passage may also imply that the purchase money was paid, not in silver bars, but in silver pieces, shekels ; the weighing being intended to ascertain that the shekels were of the proper value, which was not guamnteed by the fixed and invari able characters of a coin. If we pass on to the time of Moses, we find pieces of money of a fixed and recognised value in circulation among the Israelites, and are led to see that the amount of the circulating medium must have been very consider able. In the historical and prophetic writings of a later period mention is made of the shekel and of other pieces of money, so that their use in com merce before the Babylonish captivity is placed beyond a doubt. To term these pieces of money
coin might be to mislead, since the word coin refers the mind to the operations of a government mint ; but it is clear that as pieces of money of a fixed and recognised value they must have been of a certain size, and borne some distinctive marks. Hence the only difference between those pieces of money and coin lies in the quarter whence they came—private or public—and in the sanction and authority which they accordingly carried with them. The Talmud refers coin, strictly so called, to the ante-exilian period. 'What the circulating medium among the Hebrews was made up of, may be in ferred from what has gone before : there was the shekel ; also the sacred shekel, if this latter is to be distinguished from the former ; then the half. shekel, or bekah, which may be a name for the ordinary shekel ; there was also a quarter-shelcel, the fourth part of a shekel of silver' (i Sam. bc. 8) ; and, finally, the smallest silver coin, namely the gerah. From the passage in Samuel just cited it appears clear tbat those pieces of money were used in the ordinary commerce of life, and we have previously seen that money was demanded in the service of religion. In I Sam. ii. 36, a word oc curs (1"111) disguised in the E. V. under the phrase ' a piece of silver,' which may have been the curmnt name for the coin that, from its weight, was called a gemh. It is thus evident that there prevailed among the Hebrews, at an early period, a very considerable and much-employed metallic circulating medium.
Of these coins the shekel is worth twenty gerahs , but there are three shekels mentioned in the 0.T. —the ordinary shekel, the shekel of the sanctuary (Exod. xxx. 13), and the shekel after the king's weight (2 Sam. xiv. 26). Are these three differ ent kinds ? or are they different descriptions for the same coin ?—thus, is the first, shekel, the com mon name ; the second, sacred shekel, the coin according to the ecclesiastical standard ; the third, king,'s shekel, the same according to the regal standard, the function having pa_ssed from the priests to the monarch ? No satisfactory answer to these questions presents itself, and our space for bids more discussion.