Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Charles David Isbell" <cisbell AT home.com>]

"Dave Washburn" <dwashbur AT nyx.net> writes and asks: "Thanks for the reply
and the good insights.  As often happens, the answer to one question gives
rise to yet another question.  Does this suggest that the half-shekel tax
was only levied on eligible soldiers?  I've always been under the impression
that everybody was required to pay it, soldiers or not.  Have I
misunderstood
something?"
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Charles David Isbell writes:

Thanks for the kind words, Dave, and how right you are that one answer often
leads to more questions.  In this case, I think your initial impression is
correct, and that all families were included in the taxing.  If I remember
correctly, Josephus mentions this and ties the tax to all males over twenty
years of age including those outside of the land of Israel.

Nehemiah 10 seems to support this idea, giving a list of people including
far more than mere soldiers [vv 28-29] who accepted upon themselves the
obligation to pay an annual sum of one-third of a sheqel for the Temple [vv
32-33].

Perhaps I might add, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that this information may be
of little value, given the most recent assured results of the new historical
time lines.  Josephus, writing from Rome in the first century, would have
been copied by the pseudonymous Nehemiah much later than that, leading to
the conclusion that Nehemiah was probably an early Christian bishop in Rome
who was really talking about the Christian tithe.