Shekel

The shekel (Hebrew sheqel, from shaqal, to weigh) was the standard unit of both weight and currency in ancient Israel, preceding the introduction of coined money. Silver and gold were weighed out in transactions rather than counted as coins, and the shekel provided the normative weight standard. The sanctuary shekel — twenty gerahs — was the sacred standard (Exodus 30:13; Numbers 3:47), slightly heavier than the common shekel to prevent shortchanging in sacred dues.

The shekel appears throughout the biblical narratives as the standard medium of significant transactions: Abraham weighed four hundred shekels of silver to Ephron for the cave of Machpelah (Genesis 23:15–16); Joseph was sold for twenty pieces of silver (Genesis 37:28); the temple tax was a half-shekel (Exodus 30:13); and Goliath's armor weighed five thousand shekels of bronze (1 Samuel 17:5). After the exile, the Jews began minting their own silver shekels during the Maccabean period. The New Testament drachma and stater (Matthew 17:27) served as rough equivalents for the shekel in the Greek monetary system.