Bible Strands
Exodus 30:14
Everyone twenty years of age or older who crosses over must give this offering to the LORD.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — God delivers this instruction to Moses regarding the tabernacle funds during the wilderness period. The command addresses the entire Israelite assembly at the moment of establishing the sanctuary system.
The words — עֹבֵר ('o.Ver) literally means "one who passes over," and פְּקֻדִים (pe.ku.Dim) means "those who are enrolled." These terms jointly define the specific demographic subject to the tax.
The thread — The age threshold reappears in the military census of Numbers 1:3 and the clan registration of Numbers 1:18. The numerical boundary remains consistent across these passages.
Why it lands — The text establishes a fixed age and status requirement for a mandatory religious contribution. It requires readers to recognize that the obligation applies uniformly to the counted population regardless of wealth or poverty.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
Every one that passeth among them that are numbered, from twenty years old and above, shall give an offering unto the Lord.
Cross-references
- Numbers 1:20 From the sons of Reuben, the firstborn of Israel, according to the records of their clans and families, counting one by one the names of every male twenty years of age or older who could serve in the army,
- Numbers 1:3 You and Aaron are to number those who are twenty years of age or older by their divisions—everyone who can serve in Israel’s army.
- Numbers 1:18 and on the first day of the second month they assembled the whole congregation and recorded their ancestry by clans and families, counting one by one the names of those twenty years of age or older,
- Numbers 14:29 Your bodies will fall in this wilderness—all who were numbered in the census, everyone twenty years of age or older—because you have grumbled against Me.
- Numbers 26:2 “Take a census of the whole congregation of Israel by the houses of their fathers—all those twenty years of age or older who can serve in the army of Israel.”
- Numbers 32:11 ‘Because they did not follow Me wholeheartedly, not one of the men twenty years of age or older who came out of Egypt will see the land that I swore to give Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—