Word Finder - shekels

definition

A currency unit of both ancient and modern Israel.

definition

(often antisemitic) Money, especially that purportedly owned or distributed as bribes by Jewish elites.

definition

An ancient unit of weight equivalent to one-fiftieth of a mina.

A slave often ran away; if caught, the captor was bound to restore him to his master, and the Code fixes a reward of two shekels which the owner must pay the captor.

It should be borne in mind that in early times the larger values, such as minae, would be transmitted by commerce, while after the introduction of coinage the lesser values of shekels and drachmae would be the units; and this needs notice, because usually a borrowed unit was multiplied or divided according to the ideas of the borrowers, and strange modifications thus arose.

The Ptolemaic copper coinage is on two bases -- the uten, binarily divided, and the Ptolemaic five shekels (1050), also binarily divided.

Probably the 129 and 224 systems coexisted in the country; but on the whole it seems more likely that 129 or rather 258 grains was the Hebrew shekel before the Ptolemaic times -- especially as the 100 shekels to the mina is paralleled by the following Persian system (Hultsch) --

A variation on the main system was made by forming a mina of 50 shekels.

If this unit haS any connexion with the kat, it is that a kat of gold is worth 15 shekels or 1/4 mina of silver; this agrees well with the range of both units, only it must be remembered that 129 was used as gold unit, and another silver unit deduced from it.

The "argenteus" (as Revillout transcribes a sign in the papyri) (35) was of 5 shekels, or 1090; it arose about 440 B.C., and became after 160 B.C. a weight unit for copper.

In Syria, as early as the 15th century B.C., the tribute of the Rutennu, of Naharaina, Megiddo, Anaukasa, &c. (34), is on a basis of 454-484 kats, or 300 shekels (1/10 talent) of 226 grains.

In Spain it was 236 to 216 in different series (17), and it is a question whether the Massiliote drachmae of 58-55 are not Phoenician rather than Phocaic. In Italy this mina became naturalized, and formed the "Italic mina" of Hero, Priscian, &c.; also its double, the mina of 26 unciae or 10,800, = 50 shekels of 216; the average of 42 weights gives 5390 (=215.6), and it was divided both into 100 drachmae, and also in the Italic mode of 12 unciae and 288 scripulae (44).

The talent was of 120 minae of 5400, or 3000 shekels, shown by the talent from Herculaneum, TA, 660,000 and by the weight inscribed PONDO CXXV.

The 80-grain system, as we have seen, was probably formed by binarily dividing the 10 shekels, or "stone"; and it had a talent (Abydus lion) of 5000 drachmae; this is practically identical with the talent of 6000 Attic drachmae.

What a common soldier refused to do even for a thousand shekels of silver, the king's general at once undertook.

The Biblical references to shekels must refer to uncoined ingots.

Jewish shekels were first coined by Simon the Hasmonean, probably in 139-138 B.C. These bear inscriptions in the archaic Hebrew and various emblems, such as the cup or chalice, the lily branch with three flowers, the candlestick, the citron and palm branch and so forth.

A later series of shekels, belonging to the Roman period, are tetradrachms, "which came from the mints of Caesarea and Antioch and were used as blanks on which to impress Jewish types."

Oh, he's also got a spear with an iron point weighed six hundred shekels.

He pays a few shekels then goes out onto the street.

So I took the thirty shekels of silver and cast them into the treasury in the house of the LORD.

Obviously he had no respect for his mother, stealing 1100 silver shekels.

They got the shekels, and Findlay gives a few heckles.

The fare is 5 new shekels (60p ).

And they shall be paid many more shekels than the Sidemen.

I saw a beautiful mantle and 200 shekels of silver and 50 shekels weight of gold.

Then at Abydus, or more probably from Babylonia, there is the large bronze lion-weight, stated to have been originally 400,500 grains; this has been continually divided by 60 by different writers, regardless of the fact (Rev. arch., 1862, 30) that it bears the numeral 100; this therefore is certainly a talent of 100 minae of 4005; and as the mina is generally 50 shekels in Greek systems it points to a weight of 80.1.

I also grant fifteen thousand shekels of silver yearly out of the king 's revenues from appropriate places.

And the weight of the nails was fifty shekels of gold.

The fare is 5 new shekels (60p).

You'll have to pay for expenses with gold shekels, and if you run out, you might have to sing a Christmas carol solo!